31 New Inn

This e-book is the original magazine version of the longer novel The Mystery of 31 New Inn, which is also available at RGL. It was originally published in the January 1911 issue of Adventure magazine.

CHAPTER I. THE MYSTERIOUS PATIENT
CHAPTER II. I MEET MR. MORGAN
CHAPTER III. FOUL PLAY?
CHAPTER IV. I CONSULT THORNDYKE
CHAPTER V. THE MYSTERY DEEPENS
CHAPTER VI. MR. MORGAN'S SPECTACLES
CHAPTER VII. JEFFREY BLACKMORE'S WILL
CHAPTER VIII. THORNDYKE TAKES EVIDENCE
CHAPTER IX. THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION
CHAPTER X. WE RENT 31 NEW INN
CHAPTER XI. THE EMPTY HOUSE
CHAPTER XII. IN A LITTLE HEAP OF RUBBISH
CHAPTER XIII. A CHANGE IN SIGNATURE
CHAPTER XIV. SOME BITS OF GLASS
CHAPTER XV. A CALL FROM THE LAWYERS
CHAPTER XVI. SOME SINGULAR FACTS
CHAPTER XVII. THE MAN IN NEW INN
CHAPTER XVIII. THORNDYKE EXPLAINS
CHAPTER XIX. STEP BY STEP
CHAPTER XX. THE ENEMY DECIDES

I. — THE MYSTERIOUS PATIENT

THE hour of nine was approaching—the blessed hour of release when the casual patient ceases from troubling (or is expected to do so) and the weary practitioner may put on his slippers and turn down the surgery gas.

The fact was set forth with needless emphasis by the little American clock on the mantel-shelf, which tick-tacked frantically, as though it were eager to get the day over and be done with it; indeed, the approaching hour might have been ninety-nine from the to-do the little clock made about the matter.

The minute-hand was creeping up to the goal and the little clock had just given a kind of preliminary cough to announce its intention of striking the hour, when the bell on the door of the outer surgery rang to announce the arrival of a laggard visitor. A moment later the office-boy thrust his head in at my door and informed me that a gentleman wished to see me.

They were all gentlemen in Kennington Lane—unless they were ladies or children. Sweeps, milkmen, bricklayers, costermongers, all were impartially invested with rank and title by the democratic office-boy, and I was not, therefore, surprised or disappointed when the open door gave entrance to a man in the garb of a cabman or coachman.

As he closed the door behind him, he drew from his coat pocket a note, which he handed to me without remark. It was not addressed to me, but to my principal—to the doctor, that is to say, of whose practise I was taking charge in his absence.

"You understand, I suppose," I said, as I prepared to open the envelope, "that I am not Dr. Pike? He is out of town at present, and I am looking after his patients."

"It's of no consequence," the man replied. "You'll do just as well as him, I expect."

On this I opened the note and read the contents, which were quite brief and, at first sight, in no way remarkable.

Could you come at once and see my brother? The bearer of this will give you further particulars and convey you to the house.

There was no address on the paper and no date, and the name of the writer was, of course, unknown to me.

"This note speaks of some further particulars," I said to the messenger. "What are the particulars referred to?"

"Why, sir, the fact is," he replied, "it's a most ridic'lous affair altogether. The sick gentleman don't seem to me to be quite right in his head; at any rate, he's got some very peculiar ideas. He's been ailing now for some time, and the master, Mr. Morgan, has tried everything he knew to get him to see a doctor. But he wouldn't. However, at last it seems he gave way, but only on one condition. He said the doctor was to come from a distance and was not to be told who he was or where he lived or anything about him; and he made the master promise to keep to these conditions before he would let him send for advice. Do you think you could come and see him on them conditions, sir?"

I considered the question for a while before replying. We doctors all know the kind of idiot who is possessed with an insane dislike and distrust of the members of our profession and we like to have as little to do with him as possible. If this had been my own practise I would have declined the case off-hand; but I could not lightly refuse work that would bring profit to my principal.

As I turned the matter over in my mind I half-unconsciously scrutinized my visitor—rather to his embarrassment—and I liked his appearance as little as I liked his message. He kept his hat on, which I resented, and he stood near the door where the light was dim, for the illumination was concentrated on the table and the patient's chair; but I could see that he had a sly, unprepossessing face and a greasy red mustache that seemed out of character with his livery, though this was mere prejudice. Moreover, his voice was disagreeable, having that dull, snuffling quality that, to the medical ear, suggests a nasal polypus. Altogether I was unpleasantly impressed, but decided, nevertheless, to undertake the case.

"I suppose," I answered at length, "it is no affair of mine who the sick man is or where he lives; but how do you propose to manage the business? Am I to be blindfolded like the visitor to the bandits' cave?"

"No, sir," he replied with a forced smile and with evident relief at my agreement. "I have a carriage waiting to take you."

"Very well," I rejoined, opening the door to let him out, "I will be with you in a minute."

I slipped into a bag a small supply of emergency drugs and a few diagnostic instruments, turned down the gas and passed out through the surgery. The carriage was standing by the curb and I viewed it with mingled curiosity and disfavor; it was a kind of large brougham, such as is used by some commercial travelers, the usual glass windows being replaced by wooden shutters intended to conceal the piles of sample-boxes, and the doors capable of being locked from outside.

I glanced at my watch and, reflecting gloomily that my brief hour of leisure would be entirely absorbed by this visit, stepped into the uninviting vehicle. Instantly the coachman slammed the door and turned the key, leaving me in total darkness.

As the carriage rattled along, now over the macadam of quiet side-streets and now over the granite of the larger thoroughfares, I meditated on the oddity of this experience and on the possible issues of the case. For one moment a suspicion arose in my mind that this might be a trick to lure me to some thieves' den where I might be robbed and possibly murdered; but I immediately dismissed this idea, reflecting that so elaborate a plan would not have been devised for so unremunerative a quarry as an impecunious general practitioner.

II. — I MEET MR. MORGAN

MY reflections were at length brought to an end by the carriage slowing down and passing under an archway—as I could tell by the hollow sound—where it presently stopped. Then I distinguished the clang of heavy wooden gates closed behind me, and a moment later the carriage door was unlocked and opened. I stepped out into a covered way that seemed to lead down to a stable; but it was all in darkness and I had no time to make any detailed observations, for the carriage had drawn up opposite a side door which was open, and in which stood an elderly woman holding a candle.

"Is that the doctor?" she inquired, shading the candle with her hand and peering at me with screwed-up eyes. Then, with evident relief: "I am glad you have come, sir. Will you please to step in?"

I followed her across a dark passage into a large room almost destitute of furniture, where she set down the candle on a chest of drawers and turned to depart.

"The master will see you in a moment," she said. "I will go and tell him you are here."

With that she left me in the twilight of the solitary candle to gaze curiously at the bare and dismal apartment with its three rickety chairs, its unswept floor, its fast-closed shutters and the dark drapery of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling to commemorate a long and illustrious dynasty of spiders.

Presently the door opened and a shadowy figure appeared, standing close by the threshold.

"Mr. Morgan, I presume?" said I, advancing toward the stranger as he remained standing by the doorway.

"Quite right, sir," he answered, and as he spoke I started, for his voice had the same thick, snuffling quality that I had already noticed in that of the coachman. The coincidence was certainly an odd one, and it caused me to look at the stranger narrowly. He appeared somewhat shorter than his servant, but then he had a pronounced stoop, whereas the coachman was stiff and upright in his carriage; then the coachman had short hair of a light brown and a reddish mustache, whereas this man appeared, so far as I could see in the gloom, to have a shock head of black hair and a voluminous black beard. Moreover he wore spectacles. "Quite right, sir," said this individual, "and I thought I had better give you an outline of the case before you go up to the patient. My brother is, as my man has probably told you, very peculiar in some of his ideas, whence these rather foolish proceedings, for which I trust you will not hold me responsible, though I feel obliged to carry out his wishes. He returned a week or two ago from New York and, being then in rather indifferent health, he asked me to put him up for a time, as he had no settled home of his own. From that time he has gradually become worse and has really caused me a good deal of anxiety, for until now I have been quite unable to prevail on him to seek medical advice. And even now he has only consented subject to the ridiculous conditions that my man has probably explained to you."

"What is the nature of his illness?" I asked. "Does he complain of any definite symptoms?"

"No," was the reply. "Indeed, he makes very few complaints of any kind, although he is obviously ill, but the fact is that he is hardly ever more than half awake. He lies in a kind of dreamy stupor from morning to night."

This struck me as excessively odd and by no means in agreement with the patient's energetic refusal to see a doctor.

"Oh, yes," Mr. Morgan answered quickly; "he rouses occasionally and is then quite rational and, as you may have gathered, rather obstinate. But perhaps you had better see for yourself what his condition is. Follow me, please: the stairs are rather dark."

The stairs were very dark and were, moreover, without any covering of carpet, so that our footsteps resounded on the bare boards as though we were in an empty house. I stumbled up after my guide, feeling my way by the hand-rail, and on the first floor followed him into a room similar in size to the one below and very barely furnished, though less squalid than the other. A single candle at the farther end threw its feeble light on a figure in the bed, leaving the rest of the room in a dim twilight.

"Here is the doctor, Henry," Mr. Morgan called out as we entered, and, receiving no answer, he added: "He seems to be dozing as usual."

I stepped forward to look at my patient while Mr. Morgan remained at the other end of the room, pacing noiselessly backward and forward in the semi-obscurity. By the light of the candle I saw an elderly man with good features and an intelligent and even attractive face, but dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and yellow. He lay with half-closed eyes and seemed to be in a dreamy, somnolent state, although not actually asleep. I advanced to the bedside and addressed him somewhat loudly by name, but the only response was a slight lifting of the eyelids which, after a brief, drowsy glance at me, slowly subsided to their former position.

I now proceeded to feel his pulse, grasping his wrist with intentional bruskness in the hope of rousing him from his stupor. The beats were slow and feeble and slightly irregular, giving clear evidence, if any were wanted, of his generally lowered vitality. My attention was next directed to the patient's eyes, which I examined closely with the aid of the candle, raising the lids somewhat roughly so as to expose the whole of the iris. He submitted without resistance to my rather ungentle handling, and showed no signs of discomfort even when I brought the flame of the candle to within a couple of inches of his eyes.

His extreme tolerance of light, however, was in no way surprising when one came to examine the pupils, for they were contracted to such a degree as to present only the minutest point of black upon the gray iris.

But the excessive contraction of the pupils was not the only singular feature in the sick man's eyes. As he lay on his back, the right iris sagged down slightly toward its center, showing a distinctly concave surface and, whenever any slight movement of the eyeball took place, a perceptible undulatory movement could be detected in it.

The patient had, in fact, what is known as a tremulous iris, a condition that is seen in cases where the crystalline lens has been extracted for the cure of cataract, or where it has become accidentally displaced, leaving the iris unsupported. Now, in the present case the complete condition of the iris made it clear that the ordinary extraction operation had not been performed, nor was I able, on the closest inspection with the aid of a lens, to find any signs of the less common "needle operation." The inference was that the patient had suffered from the accident known as dislocation of the lens, and this led to the further inference that he was almost or completely blind in the right eye.

This conclusion was, indeed, to some extent negatived by a deep indentation on the bridge of the nose, evidently produced by spectacles habitually worn, for if only one eye were useful, a monocle would answer the purpose. Yet this objection was of little weight, for many men, under the circumstances, would elect to wear spectacles rather than submit to the inconvenience and disfigurement of the single eyeglass.

As to the nature of the patient's illness, only one opinion seemed possible; it was a clear case of opium or morphia poisoning. To this conclusion all his symptoms seemed to point plainly enough. His coated tongue, which he protruded slowly and tremulously in response to a command bawled in his ear; his yellow skin and ghastly expression; his contracted pupils and the stupor from which he could be barely roused by the roughest handling, and which yet did not amount to actual insensibility— these formed a distinct and coherent group of symptoms, not only pointing plainly to the nature of the drug, but also suggesting a very formidable dose.

The only question that remained was: How and by whom that dose had been administered. The closest scrutiny of his arms and legs failed to reveal a single mark such as would be made by a hypodermic needle, and there was, of course, nothing to show or suggest whether the drug had been taken voluntarily by the patient himself or administered by some one else.

And then there remained the possibility that I might, after all, be mistaken in my diagnosis—a reflection that, in view of the obviously serious condition of the patient, I found eminently disturbing. As I pocketed my stethoscope and took a last look at my patient I realized that my position was one of extraordinary difficulty and perplexity. On the one hand my suspicions inclined me to extreme reticence, while, on the other, it was evidently my duty to give any information that might prove serviceable to the patient.

III. — FOUL PLAY?

"WELL, Doctor, what do you think of my brother?" Mr. Morgan asked as I joined him at the darkened end of the room. His manner, in asking the question, struck me as anxious and eager, but of course there was nothing remarkable in this.

"I think rather badly of him, Mr. Morgan," I replied. "He is certainly in a very low state."

"But you are able to form an opinion as to the nature of the disease?" he asked, still in a tone of suppressed eagerness.

"I can not give a very definite opinion at present," I replied guardedly. "The symptoms are decidedly obscure and might equally well indicate several different affections. They might be due to congestion of the brain and, in the absence of any other explanation, I am inclined to adopt that view. The most probable alternative is some narcotic drug such as opium, if it were possible for him to obtain access to it without your knowledge— but I suppose it is not?"

"I should say decidedly not," he replied. "You see, my brother is not very often left alone, and he never leaves the room, so I don't see how he could obtain anything. My housekeeper is absolutely trustworthy."

"Oh, very often. In fact, that is his usual condition. He rouses now and again and is quite lucid and natural for perhaps half an hour, and then he dozes off again and remains asleep for hours on end. You don't think this can be a case of sleeping-sickness, I suppose?"

"I think not," I answered, making a mental note, nevertheless, to look up the symptoms of this rare and curious disease as soon as I reached home. "Besides, he has not been in Africa, has he?"

"I can't say where he has been," was the reply. "He has just come from New York, but where he was before going there I have no idea."

"Well," I said, "we will give him some medicine and attend to his general condition, and I think I had better see him again very shortly. Meanwhile you must watch him closely, and perhaps you may have something to report to me at my next visit."

I then gave him some general directions as to the care of the patient, to which he listened attentively, and I once more suggested that I ought to see the sick man again quite soon.

"Very well, Doctor," Mr. Morgan replied, "I will send for you again in a day or two if he does not get better; and now if you will allow me to pay your fee, I will go and order the carriage while you write the prescription."

He handed me the fee and, having indicated some writing materials on a table near the bed, wished me good-evening and left the room.

As soon as I was left alone, I drew from my bag the hypodermic syringe with its little magazine of drugs that I always carried with me on my rounds. Charging the syringe with a full dose of atropin, I approached the patient once more, and, slipping up the sleeve of his night-shirt, injected the dose under the skin of his forearm. The prick of the needle roused him for a moment and he gazed at me with dull curiosity, mumbling some indistinguishable words. Then he relapsed once more into silence and apathy while I made haste to put the syringe back into its receptacle. I had just finished writing the prescription (a mixture of permanganate of potash to destroy any morphia that might yet remain in the patient's stomach) and was watching the motionless figure on the bed, when the housekeeper looked in at the door.

"The carriage is ready, doctor," said she, whereupon I rose and followed her downstairs.

The vehicle was drawn up in the covered way, as I perceived by the glimmer of the housekeeper's candle, which also enabled me dimly to discern the coachman standing close by in the shadow. I entered the carriage, the door was banged to and locked, and I then heard the heavy bolts of the gates withdrawn and the loud creaking of hinges. Immediately after, the carriage passed out and started off at a brisk pace, which was never relaxed until we reached our destination.

My reflections during the return journey were the reverse of pleasant, for I could not rid myself of the conviction that I was being involved in some very suspicious proceedings. And yet it was possible that I might be entirely mistaken—that the case might in reality be one of some brain affection accompanied by compression such as slow hemorrhage, abscess, tumor or simple congestion. Again, the patient might be a confirmed opium-eater, unknown to his brother. The cunning of these unfortunates is proverbial, and it would be quite possible for him to feign profound stupor so long as he was watched and then, when left alone for a few minutes, to nip out of bed and help himself from some secret store of the drug.

Still I did not believe this to be the true explanation. In spite of all the various possibilities, my suspicions came back to Mr. Morgan and refused to be dispelled. All the circumstances of the case itself were suspicious; so was the strange and sinister resemblance between the coachman and his employer; and so, most of all, was the fact that Mr. Morgan had told me a deliberate lie.

For he had lied, beyond all doubt. His statement as to the almost continuous stupor was absolutely irreconcilable with his other statement as to his brother's wilfulness and obstinacy; and even more irreconcilable with the deep and comparatively fresh marks of the spectacles on the patient's nose. The man had certainly worn spectacles within twenty-four hours, which he would hardly have done if he had been in a state bordering on coma.

My reflections were, for the moment, interrupted by the stopping of the carriage. The door was unlocked and thrown open and I emerged from my dark and stuffy prison.

"You seem to have a good fresh horse," I remarked, as a pretext for having another look at the coachman.

He slammed the carriage door, mounted the box and drove off as if to avoid further conversation; and as I again compared his voice with those of his master, and his features with those I had seen so imperfectly in the darkened rooms, I was still inclined to entertain my suspicion that the coachman and Mr. Morgan were one and the same person.

Over my frugal supper I found myself taking up anew the thread of my meditations, and afterward, as I smoked my last pipe by the expiring surgery fire, the strange and sinister features of the case continued to obtrude themselves on my notice. Especially was I puzzled as to what course of action I ought to follow. Should I maintain the professional secrecy to which I was tacitly committed, or ought I to convey a hint to the police?

Suddenly, and with a singular feeling of relief, I bethought me of my old friend and fellow student, John Thorndyke, now an eminent authority on medical jurisprudence. Thorndyke was a barrister in extensive special practise and so would be able to tell me at once what was my duty from a legal point of view, and, as he was also a doctor of medicine, he would understand the exigencies of medical practise. If I could only find time to call at the Temple and put the case before him, all my doubts and difficulties would be resolved.

Anxiously I opened my visiting-list to see what kind of day's work was in store for me on the morrow. It was not a heavy day, but I was doubtful whether it would allow of my going so far from my district, until my eye caught, near the foot of the page, the name of Burton. Now Mr. Burton lived in one of the old houses on the east side of Bouverie Street—less than five minutes' walk from Thorndyke's chambers in King's Bench Walk, and he was, moreover, a "chronic" who could safely be left for the last. When I had done with Mr. Burton, I could look in on my friend with a good chance of catching him on his return from the hospital.

Having thus arranged my program, I rose, in greatly improved spirits, and knocked out my pipe just as the little clock banged out the hour of midnight.

IV. — I CONSULT THORNDYKE

"AND so," said Thorndyke, eyeing me critically as we dropped into our respective easy chairs by the fire with the little tea-table between us, "you are back once more on the old trail?"

"Yes," I answered, with a laugh, "'the old trail, the long trail, the trail that is always new.'"

I laughed again—not very heartily, for there was an uncomfortable element of truth in my friend's remark, to which my own experience bore only too complete testimony. The medical practitioner whose lack of means forces him to subsist by taking temporary charge of other men's practises is likely to find that the passing years bring him little but gray hairs and a wealth of disagreeable experience.

"You will have to drop it, Jervis, you will, indeed," Thorndyke resumed after a pause. "This casual employment is preposterous for a man of your class and professional attainments. Besides, are you not engaged to be married, and to a most charming girl?"

"Juliet has just been exhorting me in similar terms—except as to the last particular," I replied. "She threatens to buy a practise and put me in at a small salary and batten on the proceeds. Moreover, she seems to imply that my internal charge of pride, vanity and egotism is equal to about four hundred pounds to the square inch and is rapidly approaching bursting-point. I am not sure that she is not right, too."

"Her point of view is eminently reasonable, at any rate," said Thorndyke. "But as to buying a practise, before you commit yourself to any such thing I would ask you to consider the suggestion that I have made more than once—that you join me here as my junior. We worked together with excellent results in the 'Red Thumbmark' case, as the newspapers called it, and we could do as well in many another. Of course, if you prefer general practise, well and good; only remember that I should be glad to have you as my junior, and that in that capacity and with your abilities you would have an opening for something like a career."

"My dear Thorndyke," I answered, not without emotion. "I am more rejoiced at your offer and more grateful than I can tell you, and I should like to go into the matter this very moment. But I must not, for I have only a very short time now before I must go back to my work, and I have not yet touched upon the main object of my visit."

"So I did. I came to consult you professionally. The fact is, I am in a dilemma, and I want you to tell me what you think I ought to do."

"It is nothing that affects me personally at all," I continued. "But perhaps I had better give you an account of the whole affair from the beginning."

Accordingly I proceeded to relate in detail the circumstances connected with my visit to the mysterious patient of the preceding evening, to all of which Thorndyke listened with close attention and evident interest.

"A very remarkable story, Jervis," he said, as I concluded my narrative. "In fact, quite a fine mystery of the good, old-fashioned Adelphi drama type. I particularly like the locked carriage. You have obviously formed certain hypotheses on the subject?"

"Well," said Thorndyke, "I expect yours and mine are pretty much alike, for there are two obvious alternative explanations of the affair."

"That Mr. Morgan's account of his brother's illness may be perfectly true and straightforward. The patient may be an opium-eater or morphinomaniac hitherto unsuspected. The secrecy and reticence attributed to him are quite consistent with such a supposition. On the other hand, Mr. J. Morgan's story may be untrue—which is certainly more probable—and he may be administering morphia for his own ends.

"The objection to this view is that morphia is a very unusual and inconvenient poison, except in a single fatal dose, on account of the rapidity with which tolerance of the drug is established. Nevertheless we must not forget that slow morphia poisoning might prove eminently suitable in certain cases. The prolonged use of morphia in large doses enfeebles the will, confuses the judgment and debilitates the body, and so might be adopted by a poisoner whose aim was to get some instrument or document executed, such as a will or assignment, after which, death might, if necessary, be brought about by other means. Did it seem to you as if Mr. Morgan was sounding you as to your willingness to give a death-certificate?"

"He said nothing to that effect, but the matter was in my mind, which was one reason for my extreme reticence."

"Yes, you showed excellent judgment in circumstances of considerable difficulty," said Thorndyke, "and, if our friend is up to mischief, he has not made a happy selection in his doctor. Just consider what would have happened—assuming the man to be bent on murder—if some blundering, cocksure idiot had rushed in, jumped to a diagnosis, called the case, let us say, an erratic form of Addison's disease, and predicted a fatal termination. Thenceforward the murderer's course would be clear; he could compass his victim's death at any moment, secure of getting a death-certificate. As it is, he will have to move cautiously for the present—always assuming that we are not doing him a deep injustice."

"Yes," I answered, "we may take it that nothing fatal will happen just at present, unless some more easy-going practitioner is called in. But the question that is agitating me is, What ought I to do? Should I, for instance, report the case to the police?"

"I should say certainly not," replied Thorndyke. "In the first place, you can give no address, nor even the slightest clue to the whereabouts of the house, and, in the second, you have nothing definite to report. You certainly could not swear an information and, if you made any statement, you might find, after all, that you had committed a gross and ridiculous breach of professional confidence. No, if you hear no more from Mr. J. Morgan, you must watch the reports of inquests carefully and attend if necessary. If Mr. Morgan sends for you again, you ought undoubtedly to fix the position of the house. That is your clear duty for many and obvious reasons, and especially in view of your finding it necessary to communicate with the coroner or the police."

"That is all very well," I exclaimed, "but will you kindly tell me, my dear Thorndyke, how a man, boxed up in a pitch-dark carriage, is going to locate any place to which he may be conveyed?"

"I don't think the task presents any difficulties," he replied. "You would be prepared to take a little trouble, I suppose?"

"Certainly," I rejoined. "I will do my utmost to carry out any plan you may suggest."

"It must be only a few," I answered, "for I ought to be getting back to my work."

"I won't detain you more than five minutes," said Thorndyke. "I will just run up to the workshop and get Polton to prepare what you will want, and when I have shown you how to get it to work I will let you go."

He hurried away, leaving the door open, and returned in less than a couple of minutes.

"Come into the office," said he, and I followed him into the adjoining room—a rather small but light apartment of which the walls were lined with labeled deed-boxes. A massive safe stood in one corner and, in another, close to a window, was a great roll-top table surmounted by a nest of over a hundred labeled drawers. From one of the latter he drew a paper-covered pocket note-book and, sitting down at the table, began to rule the pages each into three columns, two quite narrow and one broad.

He was just finishing the last page when there came a very gentle tap at the door.

The dry, shrewd-looking, little elderly man entered and I was at once struck by the incongruity of his workman's apron and rolled-up sleeves with his refined and intellectual face.

"Will this do?" he asked, holding out a little thin board about seven inches by five, to one comer of which a pocket compass had been fixed with shellac.

"What a wonderful old fellow that is, Jervis!" my friend observed, as his assistant retired with a friendly smile at me. "He took in the idea instantly and he seems to have produced the finished article by magic, as the conjurers bring forth bowls of goldfish at a moment's notice. And now as to the use of this appliance. Can you read a compass?"

"Good, then you will have no difficulty, though I expect the compass needle will jig about a good deal in the carriage. Here is a pocket reading-lamp, which you can hook on to the carriage lining. This note-book can be fixed to the board with an india-rubber band—so. You observe that the thoughtful Polton has stuck a piece of thread on the glass of the compass to serve as a lubber's line. Now this is how you will proceed: As soon as you are locked in the carriage, light your lamp—better have a book with you in case the light is seen—get out your watch and put the board on your knee. Then enter in one narrow column of your note-book the time; in the other, the direction shown by the compass and, in the broad column, any particulars, including the number of steps the horse makes in a minute, Thus:—"

He opened the note-book and made one or two sample entries in pencil as follows:

9:40—S.E. Start from home.
9:41—S.W. Granite blocks.
9:43—S.W. Wood pavement. Hoofs 104.
9:47—W. by S. Granite crossing Macadam.

"Perfectly," I answered. "It is quite clear and simple, though, I must say, highly ingenious. But I must really go now."

"Good-by, then," said Thorndyke, slipping a well-sharpened pencil through the rubber band that fixed the note-book to the board. "Let me know how you get on, and come and see me again as soon as you can, in any case."

He handed me the board and the lamp, and when I had slipped them into my pocket we shook hands and I hurried away, a little uneasy at having left my charge so long.

V. — THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

A COUPLE of days passed without my receiving any fresh summons from Mr. Morgan, a circumstance that occasioned me some little disappointment, for I was now eager to put into practise Thorndyke's ingenious plan for discovering the whereabouts of the house of mystery. When the evening of the third day was well advanced and Mr. Morgan still made no sign, I began to think that I had seen the last of my mysterious patient and that the elaborate preparations for tracking him to his hiding-place had been made in vain.

It was therefore with a certain sense of relief and gratification that I received, at about ten minutes to nine, the office-boy's laconic announcement of "Mr. Morgan's carriage," followed by the inevitable "Wants you to go and see him at once."

The two remaining patients were of the male sex—an important time-factor in medical practise—and, as they were both cases of simple and common ailments, I was able to dispatch their business in about ten minutes.

Then, bidding the boy close up the surgery, I put on my overcoat, slipped the little board and the lamp into the pocket, tucked a newspaper under my arm and went out.

The coachman was standing by the horse's head and touched his hat as he came forward to open the door.

"I have fortified myself for the long drive, you see," I remarked, exhibiting the newspaper as I stepped into the carriage. "But you can't read in the dark," said he.

"Oh, I see," said the coachman, adding, as I hooked the lamp on to the back cushion, "I suppose you found it rather a dull ride last time?" Then, without waiting for a reply, he slammed and locked the door and mounted the box.

As on the previous occasion, the carriage was driven at a smart and regular pace, but as I watched the compass I became more and more astonished at the extraordinarily indirect manner in which it proceeded. For the compass needle, though it oscillated continually with the vibration, yet remained steady enough to show the main direction quite plainly, and I was able to see that our course zigzagged in a way that was difficult to account for.

Once we must have passed close to the river, for I heard a steamer's whistle—apparently a tug's—quite near at hand, and several times we passed over bridges or archways. All these meanderings I entered carefully in my note-book, and mightily busy the occupation kept me; for I had hardly time to scribble down one entry before the compass needle would swing round sharply, showing that we had, once more, turned a corner.

At length the carriage slowed down and turned into the covered way, whereupon, having briefly noted the fact and the direction, I smuggled the board and the note-book—now nearly half-filled with hastily scrawled memoranda—into my pocket; and when the door was unlocked and thrown open, I was deep in the contents of the evening paper.

I was received, as before, by the housekeeper, who, in response to my inquiry as to the patient's condition, informed me that he had seemed somewhat better. "As, indeed, he ought to," she added, "with all the care and watching he gets from the master. But you'll see that for yourself, sir, and, if you will wait here, I will go and tell Mr. Morgan you have come."

An interval of about five minutes elapsed before she returned to usher me up the dark staircase to the sick-room, and, on entering, I perceived Mr. Morgan, stooping over the figure on the bed. He rose, on seeing me, and came to meet me with his hand extended.

"I had to send for you again, you see, Doctor," he said. "The fact is, he is not quite so well this evening, which is extremely disappointing, for he had begun to improve so much that I hoped recovery had fairly set in. He has been much brighter and more wakeful the last two days, but this afternoon he sank into one of his dozes and has seemed to be getting more and more heavy ever since."

"Quite regularly," replied Mr. Morgan, indicating with a gesture the half-empty bottle on the table by the bedside.

"Naturally he takes very little; and, of course, when these attacks of drowsiness come on, he is without food for rather long periods."

I stepped over to the bed, leaving Mr. Morgan in the shadow, as before, and looked down at the patient. His aspect was, if anything, more ghastly and corpse-like than before; he lay quite motionless and relaxed, the only sign of life being the slight rise and fall of his chest and the soft gurgling snore at each shallow breath. At the first glance I should have said that he was dying, and indeed, with my previous knowledge of the case, I viewed him with no little anxiety, even now.

He opened his eyes, however, when I shouted in his ear, and even put out his tongue when asked in similar stentorian tones, but I could get no answer to any of my questions—not even the half-articulate mumble I had managed to elicit on the previous occasion. His stupor was evidently more profound now than then and, whatever might be the cause of his symptoms, he was certainly in a condition of extreme danger. Of that I had no doubt.

"I am afraid you don't find him any better to-night," remarked Mr. Morgan as I joined him at the other end of the room.

"No," I answered. "His condition appears to me to be very critical. I should say it is very doubtful whether he will rouse at all."

"You don't mean that you think he is dying?" Mr. Morgan spoke in tones of very unmistakable anxiety—even of terror.

He evidently spoke the truth, for his appearance and manner denoted the most extreme agitation.

"I really think," he continued, "—at least I hope that you take an unnecessarily serious view of his condition. He has been like this before, you know."

"Possibly," I answered. "But there comes a last time, and it may have come now."

"Have you been able to form any more definite opinion as to the nature of this dreadful complaint?" he asked.

"As to your suggestion that his symptoms might be due to drugs, I think we may consider that disposed of. He has been watched, practically without cessation, since you came last and, moreover, I have myself turned out the room and examined the bed, and not a trace of any drug was to be found. Have you considered the question of sleeping-sickness?"

I looked at the man narrowly before answering, and distrusted him more than ever. Still, my concern was with the patient and his present needs; I was, after all, a doctor, not a detective, and the circumstances called for straightforward speech and action on my part.

"His symptoms are not those of sleeping-sickness," I replied. "They are brain symptoms and are, in my opinion, due to morphia poisoning."

VI. — MR. MORGAN'S SPECTACLES

"BUT, my dear sir," he exclaimed, "the thing is impossible! Haven't I just told you that he has been watched continuously?"

"I can judge only by the appearances I find," I answered. Then, seeing that he was about to offer fresh objections, I continued: "Don't let us waste precious time in discussion, or your brother may be dead before we have reached a conclusion. If you will get some strong coffee made, I will take the other necessary measures, and perhaps we may manage to pull him round."

The decision of my manner cowed him; besides which he was manifestly alarmed. Replying stiffly that I "must do as I thought best," he hurried from the room, leaving me to carry out my part of the cure. And as soon as he was gone I set to work without further loss of time.

Having injected a full dose of atropin, I took down from the mantelshelf the bottle containing the mixture that I had prescribed—a solution of potassium permanganate. The patient's lethargic condition made me fear that he might be unable to swallow, so that I could not take the risk of pouring the medicine into his mouth for fear of suffocating him. A stomach-tube would have solved the difficulty, but of course I had none with me.

I had, however, a mouth-speculum, which also acted as a gag, and, having propped the patient's mouth open with this, I hastily slipped off one of the rubber tubes from my stethoscope and inserted into one end of it a vulcanite ear-speculum to act as a funnel. Then, introducing the other end of the tube into the gullet, I cautiously poured a small quantity of the medicine into the extemporized funnel.

To my great relief, a movement of the throat showed that the swallowing reflex still existed, and, thus encouraged, I poured down the tube as much of the fluid as I thought it wise to administer at one time.

I had just withdrawn the tube and was looking round for some means of cleansing it when Mr. Morgan returned and, contrary to his usual practise, came close up to the bed. He glanced anxiously from the prostrate figure to the tube that I was holding and then announced that the coffee was being prepared. As he spoke, I was able, for the first time, to look him fairly in the face by the light of the candle.

Now it is a curious fact—though one that most persons must have observed—that there sometimes occurs a considerable interval between the reception of a visual impression and its transfer to the consciousness. A thing may be seen, as it were, unconsciously, and the impression consigned, apparently, to instant oblivion, and yet the picture may be subsequently revived by memory with such completeness that its details can be studied as though the object were still actually visible. Something of that kind must have happened to me now, for, preoccupied as I was by the condition of the patient, the professional habit of rapid and close observation caused me to direct a searching glance at the man before me. It was only a brief glance, for Mr. Morgan, perhaps embarrassed by my intent regard of him, almost immediately withdrew into the shadow, but it revealed two facts of which I took no conscious note at the time, but which came back to me later and gave me much food for speculation.

One fact thus observed was that Mr. Morgan's eyes were of a bluish-gray, like those of his brother, and were surmounted by light-coloured eyebrows, entirely incongruous with his black hair and beard.

But the second fact was much more curious. As he stood, with his head slightly turned, I was able to look through one glass of his spectacles at the wall beyond. On the wall was a framed print, and the edge of the frame, seen through the spectacle-glass, appeared unaltered and free from distortion, as though seen through plain window-glass; and yet the reflections of the candle-flame in the spectacles showed the flame inverted, clearly proving that the glasses were concave on one surface at least.

These two apparently irreconcilable appearances, when I subsequently recalled them, puzzled me completely, and it was not until some time afterward that the explanation of the mystery came to me.

For the moment, however, the sick man occupied my attention to the exclusion of all else. As the atropin took effect he became somewhat less lethargic, for when I spoke loudly in his ear and shook him gently by the arm he opened his eyes and looked dreamily into my face; but the instant he was left undisturbed, he relapsed into his former condition. Presently the housekeeper arrived with a jug of strong black coffee, which I proceeded to administer in spoonfuls, giving the patient a vigorous shake-up between whiles and talking loudly into his ear.

Under this treatment he revived considerably and began to mumble and mutter in reply to my questions, at which point Mr. Morgan suggested that he should continue the treatment while I wrote a prescription.

"It seems as if you were right, after all, Doctor," he conceded, as he took his place by the bedside, "but it is a complete mystery to me. I shall have to watch him more closely than ever, that is evident."

His relief at the improvement of his brother's condition was most manifest and, as the invalid continued to revive apace, I thought it now safe to take my departure.

"I am sorry to have kept you so long," he said, "but I think the patient will be all right now. If you will take charge of him for a moment, I will go and call the coachman; and perhaps, as it is getting late, you could make up the prescription yourself and send the medicine back with the carriage."

To this request I assented and, as he left the room, I renewed my assaults upon the unresisting invalid.

In about five minutes the housekeeper made her appearance to tell me that the carriage was waiting and that she would stay with the patient until the master returned.

To this I agreed and took my departure, candle in hand, leaving her shaking the patient's hand with pantomimic cordiality and squalling into his ear shrill exhortations to "wake up and pull himself together."

As soon as I was shut in the carriage, I lighted my lamp and drew forth the little board and note-book, but the notes that I jotted down on the return journey were must less complete than before, for the horse, excelling his previous performances, rattled along at a pace that rendered writing almost impossible, and indeed more than once he broke into a gallop.

The incidents of that evening made me resolve to seek the advice of Thorndyke on the morrow and place the note-book in his hands, if the thing could possibly be done, and with this comforting resolution I went to bed. But:

and my schemes, in this respect, went "a-gley" with a vengeance. In the course of the following morning a veritable avalanche of urgent messages descended on the surgery, piling up a visiting-list at which I stood aghast.

Later on, it appeared that a strike in the building trade had been followed immediately by a general failure of health on the part of the bricklayers who were members of the benefit clubs, accompanied by symptoms of the most alarming and unclassical character, ranging from "sciatica of the blade-bones," which consigned one horny-handed sufferer to an armchair by the kitchen fire, to "windy spavins," which reduced another to a like piteous plight. Moreover, the sufferings of these unfortunates were viewed with callous skepticism by their fellow members (not in the building trade) who called aloud for detailed reports from the medical officer.

And, as if this were not enough, a local milkman, having secretly indulged in an attack of scarlatina, proceeded to shed microbes into the milk-cans, with the result that a brisk epidemic swept over the neighborhood.

From these causes I was kept hard at work from early morning to late at night, with never an interval for repose or reflection. Not only was I unable to call upon Thorndyke, but the incessant round of visits, consultations and reports kept my mind so preoccupied that the affairs of my mysterious patient almost faded from my recollection. Now and again, indeed, I would give a passing thought to the silent figure in the dingy house, and, as the days passed and the carriage came no more, I would wonder whether I ought not to communicate my deepening suspicions to the police. But, as I have said, my time was spent in an unceasing rush of work and the matter was allowed to lapse.

VII.— JEFFREY BLACKMORE'S WILL

THE hurry and turmoil continued without abatement during the three weeks that remained before my employer was due to return. Long harassing days spent in tramping the dingy streets of Kennington, or scrambling up and down narrow stairways, alternated with nights made hideous by the intolerable jangle of the night-bell, until I was worn out with fatigue. Nor was the labor made more grateful by the incessant rebuffs that fall to the lot of the "substitute," or by the reflection that for all this additional toil and anxiety I should reap not a farthing of profit.

As I trudged through the dreary thoroughfares of this superannuated suburb with its once rustic villas and its faded gardens, my thoughts would turn enviously to the chambers in King's Bench Walk and I would once again register a vow that this should be my last term of servitude.

From all of which it will be readily understood that when one morning there appeared opposite our house a four-wheeled cab laden with trunks and portmanteaux I hurried out with uncommon cordiality to greet my returning principal. He was not likely to grumble at the length of the visiting-list, for he was, as he once told me, a glutton for work, and a full day-book makes a full ledger. And, in fact, when he ran his eye down the crowded pages of my list he chuckled aloud and expressed himself as more than eager to get to work at once.

In this I was so far from thwarting him that by two o'clock I had fairly closed my connection with the practise, and half-an-hour later found myself strolling across Waterloo Bridge with the sensations of a newly-liberated convict and a check for twenty-five guineas in my pocket. My objective was the Temple, for I was now eager to hear more of Thorndyke's proposal, and wished, also, to consult him as to where in his neighborhood I might find lodgings in which I could put up for a few days.

The "oak" of my friend's chambers stood open and when I plied the knocker the inner door was opened by Polton.

"Why, it's Dr. Jervis," said he, peering up at me in his quick birdlike manner. "The Doctor is out just now, but I am sure he wouldn't like to miss you. Will you come in and wait? He will be in very shortly."

I entered and found two strangers seated by the fire, one an elderly professional-looking man—a lawyer as I guessed; the other a man of about twenty-five, fresh-faced, sunburnt and decidedly prepossessing in appearance. As I entered, the latter rose and made a place for me by the fire, for the day was chilly, though it was late Spring.

"You are one of Thorndyke's colleagues, I gather," said the elder man after we had exchanged a few remarks on the weather. "Since I have known him I have acquired a new interest in and respect for doctors. He is a most remarkable man, sir, a positive encyclopedia of out-of-the-way and unexpected knowledge."

"Yes, and the way in which he brings his knowledge to bear on intricate cases is perfectly astonishing," my new acquaintance continued. "I seldom abandon an obscure case or let it go into court until I have taken his opinion. An ordinary counsel looks at things from the same point of view as I do myself and has the same kind of knowledge, if rather more of it, but Thorndyke views things from a radically different standpoint and brings a new and totally different kind of knowledge into the case. He is a lawyer and a scientific specialist in one, and the combination of the two types of culture in one mind, let me tell you emphatically, is an altogether different thing from the same two types in separate minds."

"I can well believe that," I said and was about to illustrate my opinion when a key was heard in the latch and the subject of our discourse entered the room.

"Why, Jervis." he exclaimed cheerily, "I thought you had given me the slip again. Where have you been?"

"Up to my eyes in work," I replied. "But I am free—my engagement is finished."

"Well, not so young as I was at your age," answered the solicitor with a smile. "I have brought a client of mine to see you," he continued—, "Mr. Stephen Blackmore."

Thorndyke shook hands with the younger man and hoped that he might be of service to him.

"For my part," said Mr. Blackmore, "I see no necessity for Dr. Jervis to go away. We have nothing to tell that is not public property."

"If Mr. Marchmont agrees to that," said Thorndyke, "I shall have the advantage of being able to consult with my colleague if necessary."

"I leave the matter in your hands, Doctor," said the solicitor. "Your friend is no doubt used to keeping his own counsel."

"He is used to keeping mine, as a matter of fact," replied Thorndyke. "He was with me in the Hornby case, you may remember, Marchmont, and a most trusty colleague I found him; so, with your permission, we will consider your case with the aid of a cup of tea." He pressed an electric bell three times, in response to which signal Polton presently appeared with a teapot and, having set out the tea-service with great precision and gravity, retired silently to his lair on the floor above.

"Now," said Mr. Marchmont, "let me explain at the outset that ours is a forlorn hope. We have no expectations whatever."

"Quite so—by the way, what delicious tea you brew in these chambers! Well, as to our little affair. Legally speaking, we have no case—not the ghost of one. Yet I have advised my client to take your opinion on the matter, on the chance that you may perceive some point that we have overlooked. The circumstances, briefly stated, are these: My client, who is an orphan, had two uncles, John Blackmore, and Jeffrey, his younger brother. Some two years ago—to be exact, on the twenty-third of July, 1898— Jeffrey executed a will by which he made my client his executor and sole legatee. He had a pension from the Foreign Office, on which he lived, and he possessed personal property to the extent of about two thousand pounds.

"Early last year he left the rooms in Jermyn Street, where he had lived for some years, stored his furniture and went to Nice, where he remained until November. In that month, it appears, he returned to England and at once took chambers in New Inn, which he furnished with some of the things from his old rooms. He never communicated with any of his friends, so that the fact of his being in residence at the Inn only became known to them when he died.

"This was all very strange and different from his customary conduct, as was also the fact that he seems to have had no one to cook for him or look after his rooms.

"About a fortnight ago he was found dead in his chambers— under slightly peculiar circumstances, and a more recent will was then discovered, dated the ninth of December, 1899. Now no change had taken place in the circumstances of the testator to account for the new will, nor was there any material change in the disposition of the property. The entire personalty, with the exception of fifty pounds, was bequeathed to my client, but the separate items were specified, and the testator's brother, John Blackmore, was named as the executor and residuary legatee."

"I see," said Thorndyke. "So that your client's interest in the will would appear to be practically unaffected by the change."

"There it is!" exclaimed the solicitor, slapping the table to add emphasis to his words. "Apparently his interest is unaffected; but actually the change in the form of the will affects him in the most vital manner."

"Yes. I have said that no change had taken place in the testator's circumstances at the time the new will was executed. But only two days before his death, his sister. Mrs. Edmund Wilson, died and, on her will being proved, it appears that she had bequeathed to him her entire personalty, estimated at nearly thirty thousand pounds."

"You see the point," continued Mr. Marchmont. "By the original will this great sum would have accrued to my client, whereas by the second will it goes to the residuary legatee, Mr. John Blackmore; and this, it appears to us, could not have been in accordance with the wishes and intentions of Mr. Jeffrey, who evidently desired his nephew to inherit his property."

"There seem to be some curious features in the case," said Thorndyke. "Perhaps we had better have a narrative of the whole affair from the beginning."

He fetched from the office a small note-book and a blotting-pad which he laid on his knee as he reseated himself.

VIII. — THORNDYKE TAKES EVIDENCE

"WELL," said Mr. Marchmont, "we will begin with the death of Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore. It seems that about eleven o'clock in the morning of the twenty-seventh of March, that is, about a fortnight ago, a builder's man was ascending a ladder to examine a gutter on one of the houses in New Inn when, on passing a window that was open at the top, he looked in and perceived a gentleman lying on the bed. The gentleman was fully dressed and had apparently lain down to rest, but, looking again, the workman was struck by the remarkable pallor of the face and by the entire absence of movement. On coming down, he reported the matter to the porter at the lodge.

"Now the porter had already that morning knocked at Mr. Blackmore's door to hand him the receipt for the rent and, receiving no answer, had concluded that the tenant was absent. When he received the workman's report, therefore, he went to the door of the chambers, which were on the second floor, and knocked loudly and repeatedly, but there was still no answer.

"Considering the circumstances highly suspicious, he sent for a constable, and when the latter arrived the workman was directed to enter the chambers by the window and open the door from the inside. This was done, and the porter and the constable, going into the bedroom, found Mr. Blackmore lying upon the bed, dressed in his ordinary clothes, and quite dead."

"Less than twenty-four hours, for the porter saw him on the previous day. He came to the Inn about half-past six in a four-wheeled cab."

"That the porter can not say. The glass window of the cab was drawn up and he saw Mr. Blackmore's face through it only by the light of the lamp outside the lodge as the cab passed through the archway. There was a dense fog at the time—you may remember that very foggy day about a fortnight ago?"

"I do," replied Thorndyke. "Was that the last time the porter saw Mr. Blackmore?"

"No, I said 'peculiar,' not 'suspicious'; it was a clear case of suicide. The constable reported to his inspector, who came to the chambers at once and brought the divisional surgeon with him. On examining the body they found a hypodermic syringe grasped in the right hand, and at the post-mortem a puncture was found in the right thigh. The needle had evidently entered vertically and deeply instead of being merely passed through the skin, which was explained by the fact that it had been driven in through the clothing.

"The syringe contained a few drops of a concentrated solution of strophanthin, and there were found on the dressing-table two empty tubes labeled 'Hypodermic Tabloids; Strophanthin I-500 grain,' and a tiny glass mortar and pestle containing crystals of strophanthin. It was concluded that the entire contents of both tubes, each of which was proved to have contained twenty tabloids, had been dissolved to charge the syringe. The post-mortem showed, naturally, that death was due to poisoning by strophanthin.

"It was also proved that the deceased had been in the habit of taking morphia, which was confirmed by the finding in the chamber of a large bottle half full of morphia pills, each containing half a grain."

"Yes. The theory of the doctors was that the deceased had taken morphia habitually and that, in a fit of depression caused by reaction from the drug, he had taken his life by means of the more rapidly acting poison."

"A very reasonable explanation," agreed Thorndyke. "And now to return to the will. Had your Uncle Jeffrey any expectations from his sister, Mr. Blackmore?"

"I can't say with certainty," replied Blackmore. "I knew very little of my aunt's affairs, and I don't think my uncle knew much more, for he was under the impression that she had only a life interest in her late husband's property."

"The will, you say, is perfectly regular. Has the signature been examined by an expert?"

"As a matter of form," replied Mr. Marchmont, "I got the head cashier of the deceased's bank to step round and compare the signatures of the two wills. There were, in fact, certain trifling differences; but these are probably to be explained by the drug habit, especially as a similar change was to be observed in the checks that have been paid in during the last few months. In any case the matter is of no moment, owing to the circumstances under which the will was executed."

"That on the morning of the ninth of December Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore came into the lodge and asked the porter and his son, a house-painter, who happened to be in the lodge at the time, to witness his signature. 'This is my will,' said he, producing the document, 'and perhaps you had better glance through it, though that is not necessary.' The porter and his son accordingly read through the will and then witnessed the signature and so were able to swear to the document at the inquest."

"Ah, then that disposes of the will," said Thorndyke, "even of the question of undue influence. Now, as to your Uncle Jeffrey, Mr. Blackmore. What kind of man was he?"

"A quiet, studious, gentle-mannered man," answered Blackmore, "very nervous, about fifty-live years of age, and not very robust. He was of medium height—about five feet seven—fair, slightly gray, clean shaven, rather spare, had gray eyes, wore spectacles and stooped slightly as he walked."

"And is now deceased," added Mr. Marchmont dryly, as Thorndyke noted down these apparently irrelevant particulars.

"He had a bad fall from a horse, which left him, for a time, a complete wreck. Moreover, his eyesight, which was never very good, became much worse. In fact, he practically lost the sight of one eye altogether—it was the right one, I think—and as this had been his good eye, he felt the loss very much."

"You mentioned that he was a studious man. Of what nature were the subjects that occupied him?"

"He was an Oriental scholar of some position, I believe. He had been attached to the legations at Bagdad and Tokyo and had given a good deal of attention to Oriental languages and literature. He was also much interested in Babylonian and Assyrian archeology and assisted, for a time, in the excavations at Birs Nimroud."

"I see," said Thorndyke; "a man of considerable attainments. And now as to your Uncle John?"

"I can't tell you much about him," answered Blackmore. "Until I saw him at the inquest I had not met him since I was a boy, but he is as great a contrast to Uncle Jeffrey in character as in appearance."

"Well, perhaps I am exaggerating the difference. They were of much the same height, though John was a shade taller, and their features were, I suppose, not unlike; and their coloring was similar, but, you see, John is a healthy man with good eyesight and a brisk, upright carriage and he wears a large beard and mustache. He is rather stout, too, as I noticed when I met him at the inquest. As to his character, I am afraid he has not been a great credit to his family. He started in life as a manufacturing chemist, but of late years he has been connected with what they call, I think, a bucket-shop, though he describes himself as a stock broker."

"Not friendly at all. I think Uncle John had done something shady —let Mr. Wilson in, in some way, over a bogus investment, but I don't know the details."

"Would you like a description of the lady, Thorndyke?" asked Mr. Marchmont with genial sarcasm.

"Not just now, thanks," answered Thorndyke with a quiet smile, "but I will note down her full name."

"Thank you. There is just one more point—what were your uncle's habits and manner of life at New Inn?"

"According to the porter's evidence at the inquest," said Mr. Blackmore, "he lived in a very secluded manner. He had no one to look after his rooms, but did everything for himself, and no one is known to have visited the chambers. He was seldom seen about the Inn and the porter thinks that he must have spent most of his time indoors or else he must have been away a good deal—he can not say which."

"Thank you, Mr. Blackmore. I think that is all I have to ask at present. If anything fresh occurs to me, I will communicate with you through Mr. Marchmont."

"I am afraid there is little to hope for," said the solicitor as he shook my friend's hand, "but I thought it worth while to give you a chance of working a miracle."

"It is not promising, I must admit. However, I will digest the material and let you have my views after due reflection."

The lawyer and his client took their departure, and Thorndyke, with a thoughtful and abstracted air, separated the written sheets from his note-book, made two perforations in the margins by means of a punch, and inserted them into a small Stolzenburg file, on the outside of which he wrote, "Jeffrey Blackmore's Will."

"There," said he, depositing the little folio in a drawer labeled "B,"—"there is the nucleus of the body of data on which our investigations must be based; and I am afraid it will not receive any great additions, though there are some very singular features in the case, as you doubtless observed."

"I observed that the will seemed as simple and secure as a will could be made," I answered, "and I should suppose the setting of it aside to be a wild impossibility."

"Perhaps you are right," rejoined Thorndyke, "but time will show. Meanwhile I understand that you are a gentleman at large now; what are your plans?"

"My immediate purpose is to find lodgings for a week or so, and I came to you for guidance as to their selection."

"You had better let me put you up for the night, at any rate. Your old bedroom is at your service and you can pursue your quest in the morning, if you wish to. Give me a note and I will send Polton with it to bring up your things in a cab."

"Now don't raise obstacles, my dear fellow," urged Thorndyke. "Say yes, and let us have a long chat to-night over old times."

I was glad enough to be persuaded to so pleasant an arrangement, so I wrote a few lines on one of my cards, which was forthwith dispatched by the faithful Polton.

IX. — THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION

"WE have an hour and a half to dispose of before dinner," said Thorndyke, looking at his watch. "What say you, my dear Jervis—shall we wander over the breezy uplands of Fleet Street or shall we seek the leafy shades of New Inn? I incline to New Inn, if that sylvan retreat commends itself to you."

"Very well," said I, "let it be New Inn. I suppose you want to nose around the scene of the tragedy, though what you expect to find is a mystery to me."

"A man of science," replied Thorndyke, "expects nothing. He collects facts and keeps an open mind. As for me, I am a mere legal snapper-up of unconsidered trifles of evidence. When I have accumulated a few facts I arrange them and reason from them. It is a capital error to decide beforehand what data are to be sought for."

"But surely," said I, as we emerged from the doorway and turned up toward Mitre Court, "you can not see any possible grounds for disputing that will?"

"I don't," he answered, "or I should have said so; but I am engaged to look into the case and I shall do so, as I said just now with an open mind. Moreover, the circumstances of the case are so singular, so full of strange coincidences and improbabilities, that they call for the closest and most searching examination."

"I hadn't observed anything so very abnormal in the case," I said. "Of course, I can see that the second will was unnecessary—that a codicil would have answered all purposes; that, as things have turned out, it does not seem to carry out the wishes of the testator; but then, if he had lived, Jeffrey Blackmore would probably have made a new will."

"Which would not have suited Brother John. But have you considered the significance of the order in which the events occurred and the strange coincidences in the dates?"

"The second will," replied Thorndyke, "was made on the ninth of December 1899; Mrs. Wilson died of cancer on the twenty-fourth of March, 1900; Jeffrey Blackmore was seen alive on the twenty-sixth of March, thus establishing the fact that he survived Mrs. Wilson, and his body was found on the twenty-seventh of March. Does that group of dates suggest nothing to you?"

I reflected for awhile and then had to confess that it suggested nothing at all.

"Then make a note of it and consider it at your leisure," said Thorndyke; "or I will write out the dates for you later, for here we are at our destination."

It was a chilly day, and a cold wind blew through the archway leading into New Inn. Halting at the half-door of the lodge we perceived a stout, purple-faced man crouching over the fire, coughing violently. He held up his hand to intimate that he was fully occupied for the moment, so we waited for his paroxysm to subside.

"Dear, dear!" exclaimed Thorndyke sympathetically, "you ought not to be sitting in this drafty lodge with your delicate chest. You should make them fit a glass door with a pigeonhole."

"Bless you," said the porter, wiping his eyes, "I daren't make any complaints. There's plenty of younger men ready to take the job. But it's terrible work for me in the Winter, especially when the fogs are about."

"It must be," rejoined Thorndyke, and then, rather to my surprise, he proceeded to inquire with deep interest into the sufferer's symptoms and the history of the attack, receiving in reply a wealth of detail and discursive reminiscence delivered with the utmost gusto. To all of this I listened a little impatiently, for chronic bronchitis is not, medically speaking, an entertaining complaint, and consultations out of business hours are an abomination to doctors. Something of this perhaps appeared in my manner, for the man broke off suddenly with an apology:

"But I mustn't detain you gentlemen talking about my health. It can't interest you, though it's serious enough for me."

"I am sure it is," said Thorndyke, "and I hope we may be able to do something for you. I am a medical man and so is my friend. We came to ask if you had any chambers to let."

"Yes, one set is furnished. It is the one," he added, lowering his voice, "that the gentleman committed suicide in—but you wouldn't mind that, being a doctor?"

"Twenty-three pounds, but the furniture would have to be taken at a valuation. There isn't much of it."

"Certainly. Here's the key; I've only just had it back from the police. There's no need for me to come with gentlemen like you; it's such a drag up all those stairs. The gas hasn't been cut off because the tenancy has not expired. It's Number 31, second floor."

We made our way across the Inn to the doorway of Number 31, the ground floor of which was occupied by solicitors' offices. The dusk was just closing in and a man was lighting a lamp on the first-floor landing as we came up the stairs.

"Who occupies the chambers on the third floor?" Thorndyke asked him as we turned on to the next flight.

"We are looking at the chambers on the second floor," said Thorndyke. "Are they pretty quiet?"

"Quiet!" exclaimed the man. "Lord bless you! the place is like a deaf and dumb cemetery. There's the solicitors on the ground floor and the architects on the first floor. They both clear out at about six, and then the 'ouse is as empty as a blown hegg. I don't wonder poor Mr. Blackmore made away with hisself; he must 'ave found it awful dull."

"So," said Thorndyke, as the man's footsteps echoed down the stairs, "when Jeffrey Blackmore came home that last evening the house was empty."

He inserted the key into the door, above which was painted in white letters the deceased man's name, and we entered, my companion striking a wax vesta and lighting the gas in the sitting-room.

"Spare and simple," remarked Thorndyke, looking round critically. "but well enough for a solitary bachelor. A cupboard of a kitchen—never used, apparently, and a small bedroom opening out of the sitting-room. Why, the bed hasn't been made since the catastrophe! There is the impression of the body! Rather gruesome for a new tenant, eh?"

He wandered round the sitting-room, looking at the various objects it contained as though he would question them as to what they had witnessed. The apartment was bare and rather comfortless and its appointments were all old and worn. A small glass-fronted bookcase held a number of solid-looking volumes—proceedings of the Asiatic Society and works on Oriental literature for the most part; and a half-dozen framed photographs of buildings and objects of archeological interest formed the only attempts at wall decoration.

Before one of these latter Thorndyke halted and, having regarded it for a few moments with close attention, uttered an exclamation.

I stepped across the room and looked over his shoulder at an oblong frame enclosing a photograph of an inscription in the weird and cabalistic arrow-head character.

"Yes," I agreed; "the cuneiform writing is surely the most uncanny-looking script that was ever invented. I wonder if poor Blackmore was able to read this stuff; I suppose he was, or it wouldn't be here."

"I should say there is no doubt that he was able to read the cuneiform character; and that is just what constitutes the strangeness of this," and Thorndyke pointed, as he spoke, to the framed photograph on the wall.

"I don't follow you at all," I said. "It would seem to me much more odd if a man were to hang upon his wail an inscription that he could not read."

"No doubt," replied Thorndyke. "But you will agree with me that it would be still more odd if a man should hang upon his wall an inscription that he could read—and hang it upside-down!"

"But how can you tell that? I didn't know that Oriental scholarship was included in your long list of accomplishments."

Thorndyke chuckled. "It isn't," he replied; "but I have read with very keen interest the wonderful history of the decipherment of the cuneiform characters, and I happen to remember one or two of the main facts. This particular inscription is in the Persian cuneiform, a much more simple form of the script than the Babylonian or Assyrian; in fact, I suspect that this is the famous inscription from the gateway at Persepolis—the first to be deciphered, winch would account for its presence here in a frame.

"Now this script reads, like our own writing, from left to right, and the rule is that all the wedge-shaped characters point to the right or downward, while the arrow-head forms are open toward the right. But if you examine this inscription you will see that the wedges point upward and to the left, and that the arrow-head characters are open toward the left. Obviously the photograph is upside-down."

"But this is really mysterious!" I exclaimed. "What do you suppose can be the explanation? Do you think poor Blackmore's eyesight was failing him, or were his mental faculties decaying?"

"I think," replied Thorndyke, "we may perhaps get a suggestion from the back of the frame. Let us see." He disengaged the frame from the two nails on which it hung and, turning it round, glanced for a moment at the back, which he then presented toward me with a quaint, half-quizzical smile. A label on the backing paper bore the words: "J. Budge, Frame-maker and Gilder, Gt. Anne St., W.C."

"Well?" I said, when I had read the label without gathering from it anything fresh.

"So it is," I rejoined hastily, a little annoyed that I had not been quicker to observe so obvious a fact. "I see your point. You mean that the frame-maker hung the thing upside-down and Blackmore never noticed the mistake."

"No, I don't think that is the explanation," replied Thorndyke. "You will notice that the label is an old one; it must have been on some years, to judge by its dingy appearance, whereas the two mirror-plates look to me comparatively new. But we can soon put that matter to the test, for the label was evidently stuck on when the frame was new, and if the plates were screwed on at the same time, the wood which they cover will be clean and new-looking."

He drew from his pocket a "combination" knife containing, among other implements, a screw-driver, with which he carefully extracted the screws from one of the little brass plates by which the frame had been suspended from the nails.

"You see," he said, when he had removed the plate and carried the photograph over to the gas-jet, "the wood covered by the plate is as dirty and time-stained as the rest of the frame. The plates have been put on recently."

"Well, since there are no other marks of plates or rings upon the frame, we may safely infer that the photograph was never hung up until it came to these rooms."

"Yes, I suppose we may. But what is the suggestion that this photograph makes to you? I know you have something in mind that bears upon the case you are investigating. What is it?"

"Come, come, Jervis," said Thorndyke, playfully, "I am not going to wet-nurse you in this fashion! You are a man of ingenuity and far from lacking in the scientific imagination; you must work out the rest of the train of deduction by yourself."

"That is how you always tantalize me!" I complained. "You take out the stopper from your bottle of wisdom and present the mouth to my nose; and then, when I have taken a hearty sniff and got my appetite fairly whetted, you clap in the stopper again and leave me, metaphorically speaking, with my tongue hanging out."

Thorndyke chuckled as he replaced the little brass plate and inserted the screws.

"You must learn to take out the stopper for yourself," said he; "then you will be able to slake your divine thirst to your satisfaction. Shall we take a look round the bedroom?"

X. — WE RENT 31 NEW INN

HE hung the photograph upon its nails and we passed on to the little chamber, glancing once more at the depression on the narrow bed, which seemed to make the tragedy so real.

"The syringe and the rest of the lethal appliances and material have been removed, I see," remarked Thorndyke. "I suppose the police or the coroner's officers have kept them."

He looked keenly about the bare, comfortless apartment, taking mental notes, apparently, of its general aspect and the few details it presented.

"Jeffrey Blackmore would seem to have been a man of few needs," he observed presently. "I have never seen a bedroom in which less attention seemed to be given to the comfort of the occupant."

He pulled at the drawer of the dressing-table, disclosing a solitary hair-brush; peeped into a cupboard, where an overcoat surmounted by a felt hat hung from a peg like an attenuated suicide; he even picked up and examined the cracked and shrunken cake of soap on the washstand, and he was just replacing this in its dish when his attention was apparently attracted by something in the dark corner close by. As he knelt on the floor to make a close scrutiny, I came over and stooped beside him. I found the object of his regard to be a number of tiny fragments of glass, which had the appearance of having been trodden upon and then scattered by a kick of the foot.

"That is what I am asking myself," he replied. "As far as I can judge from the appearance of these fragments, they appear to be the remains of a small watch-glass. But we can examine them more thoroughly at our leisure."

He gathered up the little splintered pieces with infinite care and bestowed them in the envelope of a letter which he drew from his pocket.

"And now," he said as he rose and dusted his knees, "we had better go back to the lodge, or the porter will begin to think that there has been another tragedy in New Inn."

We passed out into the sitting-room, where Thorndyke once more halted before the inverted photograph.

"Yes," he said, surveying it thoughtfully, "we have picked up a trifle of fact which may mean nothing, or, on the other hand, may be of critical importance."

"It is the one thing necessary for my complete happiness," I replied with a grin.

"I am not joking," said he. "Seriously, these chambers might be very convenient for you, especially in some new circumstances that I, and I hope you also, have in contemplation. But in any case, I should like to examine the premises at my leisure, and I suppose you would not mind appearing as the tenant if I undertake all liabilities?"

"Then let us go down and see what arrangements we can make." He turned out the gas and we made our way back to the lodge.

"What do you think of the rooms, sir?" asked the porter as I handed him back the key.

"I think they would suit me," I replied, "if the furniture could be had on reasonable terms."

"Oh, that will be all right," said the porter. "The executor—deceased's brother—has written to me saying that the things are to be got rid of for what they will fetch, but as quickly as possible. He wants those chambers off his hands, so, as I am his agent, I shall instruct the valuer to price them low."

"Can my friend have immediate possession?" asked Thorndyke. "You can have possession as soon as the valuer has seen the effects," said the porter. "The man from the broker's shop down Wych Street will look them over for us."

"I would suggest that we fetch him up at once," said Thorndyke. "Then you can pay over the price agreed on and move your things in without delay—that is, if our friend here has no objection."

"Oh, I have no objection," said the porter. "If you like to pay the purchase-money for the furniture and give me a letter agreeing to take on the tenancy, and a reference, you can have the key at once and sign the regular agreement later."

In a very short time this easy-going arrangement was carried out. The furniture broker was decoyed to the Inn and, having received his instructions from the porter, accompanied us to the vacant chambers.

"Now, gentlemen," said he, looking round disparagingly at the barely furnished rooms, "you tell me what things you are going to take and I will make my estimate."

"Clothes, hats, boots—everything. We can throw out what we don't want afterward, but my friend wishes to have immediate possession of the rooms."

"I understand," said the broker, and without more ado he produced a couple of sheets of foolscap and fell to work on the inventory.

"This gentleman didn't waste much money on clothes," he remarked presently after examining the contents of a cupboard and a chest of drawers. "Why, there's only two suits all told!"

"He doesn't seem to have embarrassed himself with an excessive number of hats or boots either," said Thorndyke. "But I believe he spent most of his time indoors."

"That might account for it," rejoined the broker, and he proceeded to add to his list the meager account of clothing.

The inventory was soon completed and the prices affixed to the items, when it appeared that the value of the entire contents of the rooms amounted to no more than eighteen pounds, twelve shillings. This sum, at Thorndyke's request, I paid to the porter, handing him my recently-acquired check for twenty-five guineas and directing him to drop the change into the letter-box of the chambers.

"That is a good thing done," remarked Thorndyke, as we took our way back toward the Strand. "I will give you a check this evening and you might let me have the key for the present. I will send Polton down with a trunk this evening, to keep up appearances. And now we will go and have some dinner."

"To come back," said Thorndyke, when Polton had set before us our simple meal, with a bottle of sound claret, "to the new arrangement I proposed the other day: You know that Polton gives me a great deal of help in my work, especially by making appliances and photographs and carrying out chemical processes under my directions. But still, clever as he is and wonderfully well-informed, he is not a scientific man, properly speaking, and of course his education and social training do not allow of his taking my place excepting in a quite subordinate capacity. Now there are times when I am greatly pushed for the want of a colleague of my own class, and it occurred to me that you might like to join me as my junior or assistant. We know that we can rub along together in a friendly way, and I know enough of your abilities and accomplishments to feel sure that your help would be of value to me. What do you think of the proposal?"

To exchange the precarious, disagreeable and uninteresting life of a regular "locum" with its miserable pay and utter lack of future prospects, for the freedom and interest of the life thus held out to me with its chances of advancement and success, was to rise at a bound out of the abyss into which misfortune had plunged me, and to cut myself free from the millstone of poverty which had held me down so long. Moreover, with the salary that Thorndyke offered and the position that I should occupy as junior to a famous expert, I could marry without the need of becoming pecuniarily indebted to my wife; a circumstance which I was sure she would regard with as much satisfaction as I did. Hence I accepted joyfully, much to Thorndyke's gratification, and, the few details of our engagement being settled, we filled our glasses and drank to our joint success.

XI. — THE EMPTY HOUSE

"BY the way, Jervis," said my new principal—or colleague, as he preferred to style himself—when, our dinner over and our chairs drawn up to the fire, we were filling our pipes in preparation for a gossip, "you never told me the end of that odd adventure of yours."

"I went to the house once again," I answered, "and followed your directions to the letter, though how much skill and intelligence I displayed in following them you will be able to judge when you have seen the note-book; it is in my trunk up-stairs with your lamp and compass."

"Ah," I replied, "that is what I have often wondered. I don't like to think about it."

I gave him a circumstantial description of all that I had seen and all that had happened on that occasion, recalling every detail that I could remember, even to the momentary glimpse I had of Mr. J. Morgan, as he stood in the light of the candle. To all of this my friend listened with rapt attention and asked me so many questions about my first visit that I practically gave him the whole story over again from the beginning.

"It was a fishy business," commented Thorndyke as I concluded, "but of course you could do nothing. You had not enough facts to swear an information on. But it would be interesting to plot the route and see where this extremely cautious gentleman resides. I suggest that we do so forthwith."

To this I assented with enthusiasm and, having fetched the notebook from my room, we soon had it spread before us on the table. Thorndyke ran his eye over the various entries, noting the details with an approving smile.

"You seem to the manner born, Jervis," said he with a chuckle, as he came to the end of the first route. "That is quite an artistic touch—'Passenger station to left.' How did you know there was a station?"

"I heard the guard's whistle and the starting of a train— evidently a long and heavy one, for the engine skidded badly."

"No," I answered. "I put the book away when I came in and have never looked at it since."

"It is a quaint document. You seem to be rich in railway bridges in those parts, and the route was certainly none of the most direct. However, we will plot it out and see whither it leads us."

He retired to the laboratory and presently returned with a T-square, a military protractor, a pair of dividers and a large drawing-board, upon which was pinned a sheet of paper.

"I see," said he, "that the horse kept up a remarkably even pace, so we can take the time as representing distance. Let us say that one inch equals one minute—that will give us a fair scale. Now you read out the notes and I will plot the route."

I read out the entries from the note-book—a specimen page of which I present for the reader's inspection—and Thorndyke laid off the lines of direction with the protractor, taking out the distance with the dividers from a scale of equal parts on the back of the instrument.

As the work proceeded a smile of quiet amazement spread over his keen, attentive face, and at each new reference to a railway bridge he chuckled softly.

"What! again?" he laughed, as I recorded the passage of the eighth bridge. "Why, it's like a game of croquet! Ah, here we are at last! '9.38—Slow down; enter arched gateway to left; Stop; Wooden gates closed.' Just look at your route, Jervis."

He held up the board with a quizzical smile, when I perceived with astonishment that the middle of the paper was occupied by a single line that zigzagged, crossed and recrossed in the most intricate manner, and terminated at no great distance from its commencement.

"Now," said Thorndyke, "let us get the map and see if we can give to each of these marvelous and erratic lines 'a local habitation and a name.' You started from Lower Kennington Lane, I think?" "Yes; from this point," indicating the spot with a pencil.

"Then," said Thorndyke, after a careful comparison of the map with the plotted route, "I think we may take it that your gateway was on the north side of Upper Kennington Lane, some three hundred yards from Vauxhall Station. The heavy train that you heard starting was no doubt one of the Southwestern expresses. You see that, rough as was the method of tracing the route, it is quite enough to enable us to identify all the places on the map. The tram-lines and railway bridges are invaluable."

He wrote by the side of the strange crooked lines the names of the streets that its different parts represented and, on comparing the amended sketch with the ordnance map, I saw that the correspondence was near enough to preclude all doubt.

"To-morrow morning," observed Thorndyke, "I shall have an hour or two to spare, and I propose that we take a stroll through Upper Kennington Lane and gaze upon this abode of mystery. This chart has fairly aroused the trailing instinct—although, of course, the affair is no business of mine."

The following morning, after an early breakfast, we pocketed the chart and the note-book and, issuing forth into the Strand, chartered a passing hansom to convey us to Vauxhall Station.

"There should be no difficulty in locating the house," remarked Thorndyke presently, as we bowled along the Albert Embankment. "It is evidently about three hundred yards from the station, and I see you have noted a patch of newly laid macadam about half way."

"Not so very completely," answered Thorndyke. "It is only three weeks, and there has been no wet weather lately."

A few minutes later the cab drew up at the station and, having alighted and paid the driver, we made our way to the bridge that spans the junction of Harleyford Road and Upper Kennington Lane.

"From here to the house," said Thorndyke, "is three hundred yards—say four hundred and twenty paces, and at about two hundred paces we ought to pass a patch of new road-metal. Now, are you ready? If we keep step we shall average our stride."

We started together at a good pace, stepping out with military regularity, and counting aloud as we went. As we told out the hundred and ninety-fourth pace I observed Thorndyke nod toward the roadway a little ahead and, looking at it attentively as we approached, it was easy to see, by the regularity of the surface and lighter color, that it had recently been remetaled.

Having counted out the four hundred and twenty paces, we halted, and Thorndyke turned to me with a smile of triumph.

"Not a bad estimate, Jervis," said he. "That will be your house if I am not much mistaken." He pointed to a narrow turning a dozen yards ahead, apparently the entrance to a yard and closed by a pair of massive wooden gates.

"Yes," I answered, "there is no doubt that this is the place. But, by Jove!" I added, as we drew nearer, "the nest is empty. Do you see?" I pointed to a small bill that was stuck on the gate announcing, "These premises, including stabling and workshops, to be let," and giving the name and address of an auctioneer in Upper Kennington Lane as the agent.

"Here is a new and startling development," said Thorndyke, "which leads one to wonder still more what has happened to your patient. Now the question is, should we make a few inquiries of the auctioneer or should we get the keys and have a look at the inside of the house? I think we will do both, and the latter first, if Messrs Ryman Brothers will trust us with the keys."

We made our way to the auctioneer's office, and were, without demur, given permission to inspect the premises.

"You will find the place in a very dirty and neglected condition," said the clerk, as he handed us a couple of keys with a wooden label attached. "The house has not been cleaned yet, but is just as it was left when we took out the furniture."

"Oh, no. But he had to leave rather unexpectedly, and he asked us to dispose of his effects for him."

"I don't. He said he should be travelling for a time and he paid us a half-year's rent in advance to be quit. The larger key is that of the wicket in the front gate."

Thorndyke took the keys and we returned together to the house which, with its closed window-shutters, had a very gloomy and desolate aspect. We let ourselves in at the wicket, when I perceived, half-way down the entry, the side door at which I had been admitted by the unknown woman.

"We will look at the bedroom first," said Thorndyke, as we stood in the dark and musty-smelling hall. "That is, if you can remember which room it was."

"It was on the first floor," said I, "and the door was just at the head of the stairs." We ascended the two flights and as we reached the landing I halted. "This was the door," I said, and was about to turn the handle when Thorndyke caught me by the arm. "One moment, Jervis," said he. "What do you make of this?" He pointed to four screw-holes, neatly filled with putty, near the bottom of the door, and two others on the jamb opposite them.

"Evidently," I answered, "there has been a bolt there, though it seems a queer place to fix one."

"Not at all," rejoined Thorndyke. "If you look up you will see that there was another at the top of the door and, as the lock is in the middle, they must have been highly effective. But there are one or two other things that strike one. First, you will notice that the bolts have been fixed on pretty recently, for the paint that they covered is of the same grimy tint as that on the rest of the door. Next, they have been taken off, which, seeing that they could hardly have been worth the trouble of removal, seems to suggest that the person who fixed them considered that their presence might appear remarkable, while the screw-holes would be less conspicuous.

"They are on the outside of the door—an unusual situation for bolts; and if you look closely you can see a slight indentation in the wood of the jamb, made by the sharp edges of the socket-plate, as though at some time a forcible attempt has been made to drag the door open when it was bolted."

"There was a second door, I remember," said I. "Let us see if that was guarded in a similar manner."

We strode through the empty room, awakening dismal echoes as we trod the bare boards, and flung open the other door. At top and bottom similar groups of screw-holes showed that this also had been made secure, the bolts in all cases being of a very substantial size.

"I am afraid these fastenings have a very sinister significance," said Thorndyke gravely, "for I suppose we can have no doubt as to their object or by whom they were fixed."

"No, I suppose not," I answered; "but if the man was really imprisoned, could he not have smashed the window and called for help?"

"The window looks out on the yard, as you see. And I expect it was secured, too."

"Yes, here we are!" He pointed to four groups of screw-holes at the corners of the shutters and, lighting a match, narrowly examined the insides of the recesses into which the shutters folded.

"The nature of the fastening is quite evident," said he. "An iron bar passed right across at the top and bottom and was secured by a staple and padlock. You can see the mark the bar made in the recess when the shutters were folded. By heaven, Jervis," he exclaimed as he flung the shutters open again, "this was a diabolical affair, and I would give a good round sum to lay my hand on Mr. J. Morgan!"

XII. — IN A LITTLE HEAP OF RUBBISH

"IT is a thousand pities we were unable to look round before they moved out the furniture," I remarked. "We might then have found some clue to the scoundrel's identity."

"Yes," replied Thorndyke, gazing round ruefully at the bare walls, "there isn't much information to be gathered here, I am afraid. I see they have swept up the litter under the grate; we may as well turn it over, though it is not likely that we shall find anything of much interest."

He raked out the little heap of rubbish with the crook of his stick and spread it out on the hearth. It certainly looked unpromising enough, being just such a rubbish-heap as may be swept up in any untidy room during a move. But Thorndyke went through it systematically, examining each item attentively, even to the local tradesmen's bills and empty paper bags, before laying them aside. One of the latter he folded up neatly and laid on the mantel-shelf before resuming his investigations.

"Here is something that may give us a hint," said he presently. He held up a battered pair of spectacles of which only one hooked side-bar remained, while both the glasses were badly cracked.

"Left eye a concave cylindrical lens," he continued, peering through the glasses at the window; "right eye plain glass—these must have belonged to your patient, Jervis. You said the tremulous iris was in the right eye, I think?"

"The frames, you notice, are peculiar," he continued. "The shape was invented by Stopford of Moorfields and is made, I believe, by only one optician—Cuxton and Parry of New Bond Street."

"What should you say that is?" I asked, picking up a small object from the rubbish. It was a tiny stick of bamboo furnished with a sheath formed of a shorter length of the same material, which fitted it closely, yet slid easily up and down the little cane.

"Ha!" exclaimed Thorndyke, taking the object eagerly from my hand. "This is really interesting. Have you never seen one of these before? It is a Japanese pocket brush or pencil, and very beautiful little instruments they are, with the most exquisitely delicate and flexible points. They are used principally for writing or drawing with Chinese or, as it is usually called, Indian ink. The bamboo, in this one, is cracked at the end and the hair has fallen out, but the sliding sheath, which protected the point, remains to show what it has been."

He laid the brush-stick on the mantel-shelf and once more turned to the rubbish-heap.

"Now here is a very suggestive thing," he said presently, holding out to me a small wide-mouthed bottle. "Observe the flies sticking to the inside, and the name on the label—'Fox, Russell Street, Covent Garden.' You were right, Jervis, in your surmise; Mr. Morgan and the coachman were one and the same person.

"This," said Thorndyke, tapping the bottle with his finger, "contained—and still contains a small quantity of—a kind of cement. Mr. Fox is a dealer in the materials for making-up, theatrical or otherwise. Now your really artistic make-up does not put on an oakum wig nor does he tie on a false beard with strings as if it were a baby's feeder. If he dons a false mustache or beard, the thing is properly made and securely fixed on, and then the ends are finished with ends of loose hair, which are cemented to the skin and afterward trimmed with scissors. This is the kind of cement that is used for that purpose."

He laid the bottle beside his other treasure-trove and returned to his search. But, with the exception of a screw and a trouser-button, he met with no further reward for his industry. At length he rose and, kicking the discarded rubbish back under the grate, gathered up his gleanings and wrapped them in his handkerchief, having first tried the screw in one of the holes in the door, from which he had picked out the putty, and found that it fitted perfectly.

"A poor collection," was his comment, as he pocketed the small parcel of miscellaneous rubbish, "and yet not so poor as I had feared. Perhaps, if we question them closely enough, these unconsidered trifles may be made to tell us something worth hearing, after all. We may as well look through the house and yard before we go."

We did so, but met with nothing that even Thorndyke's inquisitive eye could view with interest and, having returned the keys to the agent, betook ourselves back to the Temple.

XIII. — A CHANGE IN SIGNATURE

ON our return to Thorndyke's chambers I was inducted forthwith into my new duties, for an inquest of some importance was pending and my friend had been commissioned to examine the body and make a full report upon certain suspected matters.

I entered on the work with a pleasure and revived enthusiasm that tended to drive my recent experiences from my mind. Now and again, indeed, I gave a passing thought to the house in Kennington Lane and its mysterious occupants, but even then it was only the recollection of a strange experience that was past and done with.

Thorndyke, too, I supposed to have dismissed the subject from his mind, in spite of the strong feeling that he had shown and his implied determination to unravel the mystery. But on this point I was mistaken, as was proved to me by an incident that occurred on the fourth day of my residence and which I found, at the time, not a little startling.

We were sitting at breakfast, each of us glancing over the morning's letters, when Thorndyke said rather suddenly:

"Because I have a photograph here of a man whom I think you may have met. Just look at it and tell me if you remember the face."

He drew a cabinet-size photograph from an envelope that had come by the morning's post and passed it to me.

"I have certainly seen this face somewhere," said I, taking the portrait over to the window to examine it more thoroughly, "but I can not at the moment remember where."

"Try," said Thorndyke. "If you have seen the face before, you should be able to recall the person."

I looked intently at the photograph, and the more I looked, the more familiar did the face appear. Suddenly the identity of the man flashed into my mind and I exclaimed in a tone of astonishment:

"I believe you are right," was the quiet reply, "and I am glad you were able to recognize him. The identification may be of value."

I need not say that the production of this photograph filled me with amazement and that I was seething with curiosity as to how Thorndyke had obtained it; but, as he replaced it impassively in its envelope without volunteering any explanation, I judged it best to ask no questions.

Nevertheless, I pondered upon the matter with undiminished wonder and once again realized that my friend was a man whose powers, alike of observation and inference, were of no ordinary kind. I had myself seen all that he had seen and, indeed, much more. I had examined the little handful of rubbish that he had gathered up so carefully and I would have flung it back under the grate without a qualm. Not a single glimmer of light had I perceived in the cloud of mystery, nor even a hint of the direction in which to seek enlightenment.

And yet Thorndyke had, in some incomprehensible manner, contrived to piece together facts that I had not even observed, and that very completely; for it was evident that he had already, in these few days, narrowed the field of inquiry down to a very small area and must be in possession of the leading facts of the case.

As to the other case—that of Jeffrey Blackmore's will—I had had occasional proofs that he was still engaged upon it, though with what object I could not imagine, for the will seemed to me as incontestable as a will could be. My astonishment may therefore be imagined when, on the very evening of the day on which he had shown me the photograph of my patient, Thorndyke remarked coolly, as we rose from the dinner-table:

"I have nearly finished with the Blackmore case. In fact, I shall write to Marchmont this evening and advise him to enter a caveat at once."

"Why," I exclaimed, "you don't mean to say that you have found a flaw in the second will, after all!"

"A flaw!" repeated Thorndyke. "My dear Jervis, that will is a forgery from beginning to end! Of that I have no doubt whatever. I am only waiting for the final, conclusive verification to institute criminal proceedings."

"You amaze me!" I declared. "I had imagined that your investigations were—well—"

"A demonstration of activity to justify the fee, eh?" suggested Thorndyke, with a mischievous smile.

I laughed a little shamefacedly, for my astute friend had, as usual, shot his bolt very near the mark.

"I haven't shown you the signatures, have I?" he continued. "They are rather interesting and suggestive. I persuaded the bank people to let me photograph the last year's checks in a consecutive series, so as to exhibit the change which was admitted to have occurred in the character of the signature. We pinned the checks to a board in batches, each check overlapping the one below so as to show the signature only and to save space, and the dates were written on a slip of paper at the side. I photographed them full size, a batch at a time, with a tele-photo lens."

"To enable me to get a full-sized image without bringing the checks close up to the camera," he replied. "If I had used an ordinary lens, the checks could hardly have been much more than a foot from the camera and then the signatures on the margin of the plate would certainly have undergone some distortion from the effects of perspective—even if the lens itself were free from all optical defects. As it is, the photographs are quite reliable, and the enlargements that Polton has made—magnified three diameters—show the characters perfectly."

He brought out from a drawer a number of whole-plate photographs which he laid on the table end to end. Each one contained four of the enlarged signatures and, thus exhibited in series in the order of their dates, it was easy to compare their characters. Further to facilitate the comparison, the signatures of the two wills—also enlarged—had each a card to itself and could thus be laid by the side of any one of the series.

"You will remember," said Thorndyke, "Marchmont referred to a change in the character of Jeffrey Blackmore's signature?"

"It was a very slight change and, though noticed at the bank, it was not considered to be of any moment. Now if you will cast your eye over the series, you will be able to distinguish the differences. They are very small indeed; the later signatures are a little stiffer, a little more shaky, and the B and the K are both appreciably different from those in the earlier signatures. But there is another fact which emerges when the whole series is seen together, and it is so striking and significant a fact that I am astonished at its having occasioned no inquiry."

"Indeed!" said I, stooping to examine the photographs with increased interest. "What is that?"

"It is a very simple matter and very obvious, but yet, as I have said, very significant. It is this: the change in the characters of the signatures is not a gradual or insidious change, nor is it progressive. It occurs at a certain definite point and then continues without increase or variation. Look carefully at the check dated twenty-ninth of September and you will see that the signature is in what we may call the 'old manner,' whereas the next check, dated the eighteenth of October, is in the new manner.

"Now if you will run your eye through the signatures previous to the twenty-ninth of September, you will observe that none of them shows any sign of change whatever; they are all in the 'old manner'; while the signatures subsequent to the twenty-ninth of September, from the eighteenth of October onwards, are, without exception, in the 'new manner.'

"The alteration, slight and trivial as it is, is to be seen in every one of them; and you will also notice that it does not increase as time goes on; it is not a progressive change; the signature on the last check—the one that was drawn on the twenty-sixth of March to pay the rent—does not differ from the 'old manner' any more than that dated the eighteenth of October. A rather striking and important fact."

"The first will is signed in the 'old manner,' as you can see for yourself, while the signature of the second will has the characters of what we have called the 'new manner.' It is identical in style with the signatures subsequent to the twenty-ninth of September."

"Yes, I see that it is as you say," I agreed, when I had carefully made the comparison, "and it is certainly very curious and interesting. But what I do not see is the bearing of all this. The second will was signed in the presence of witnesses and that seems to dispose of the whole matter."

"It does," Thorndyke admitted; "but we must not let our data overlap. It is wise always to consider each separate fact on its own merits and work it out to a finish without allowing ourselves to be disturbed or our attention diverted by any seeming incompatibilities with other facts. Then, when we have each datum as complete as we can get it, we may put them all together and consider their relations to one another. It is surprising to see how the incompatibilities become eliminated if we work in this way—how the most (apparently) irreconcilable facts fall into agreement with one another."

"As an academic rule for conducting investigations," I replied, "your principle is, no doubt, entirely excellent. But when you seek to prove by indirect and collateral evidence that Jeffrey Blackmore did not sign a will which two respectable men have sworn they saw him sign, why, I am inclined to think that— "

"That, in the words of the late Captain Bunsby, 'the bearing of these observations lies in their application.'"

XIV. — SOME BITS OF GLASS

"HOWEVER," I resumed presently, "as you are advising Marchmont to dispute the will, I presume you have some substantial grounds for action, though I can not conceive what they may be."

"You have all the facts that I had to start with and on which I formed the opinion that the will was probably a forgery. Of course I have more data now, for, as 'money makes money,' so knowledge begets knowledge, and I put my original capital out to interest. Shall we tabulate the facts that are in our joint possession and see what they suggest?"

Thorndyke produced a note-book from a drawer and, uncapping his fountain pen, wrote down the leading facts, reading each aloud as soon as it was written.

1. The second will was unnecessary, since a codicil would have answered the purpose.

2. The evident intention of the testator was to leave the bulk of his property to Stephen Blackmore.

3. The second will did not, under existing circumstances, give effect to this intention, while the first will did.

4. The signature of the second will differs slightly from that of the first and also from the testator's ordinary signature.

5. Mrs. Wilson made her will at the end of 1897, without acquainting Jeffrey Blackmore, who seems to have been unaware of the existence of this will.

8. Jeffrey Blackmore was last seen alive on the twenty-sixth of March, 1900, i.e., two days after Mrs. Wilson's death.

9. His body was discovered on the twenty-seventh of March, three days after Mrs. Wilson's death.

10. The change in the character of his signature occurred abruptly between the twenty-ninth of September and the eighteenth of October.

"You will find that collection of facts repays careful study, Jervis, especially when considered in relation to the last of our data, which is:

11. We found, in Blackmore's chambers, a framed inscription hung on the wall upside down."

He passed the book to me and I pored over it intently, focusing my attention upon the various items with all the power of my will. But, struggle as I would, no general conclusion could be made to emerge from the mass of apparently disconnected facts.

"Well," said Thorndyke presently, after watching with grave interest my unavailing efforts, "what do you make of it?"

"Nothing!" I exclaimed desperately, slapping the book down upon the table. "Of course I can see that there are some queer features in the case, but you say the will is a forgery. Now I can find nothing in these facts to give the slightest color to such a supposition. You will think me an unmitigated donkey, I have no doubt, but I can't help that." My failure, it will be observed, had put me somewhat out of humor, and, observing this, Thorndyke hastened to reply:

"Not in the least my dear fellow; you merely lack experience. Wait until you have seen the trained legal intelligence brought to bear on these facts—which you will do, I feel little doubt, very soon after Marchmont gets my letter. You will have a better opinion of yourself then. By the way, here is another little problem for you. What was the object of which these are parts?"

He pushed across the table a little cardboard box, having first removed the lid. In it were a number of very small pieces of broken glass, some of which had been cemented together by their edges.

"These, I suppose, are the pieces of glass that you picked up in poor Blackmore's bedroom," I said, looking at them with considerable curiosity.

"Yes," replied Thorndyke. "You see that Polton has been endeavoring to reconstitute the object, whatever it was; but he has not been very successful, for the fragments were too small and irregular and the collection too incomplete. However, here is a specimen, built up of six small pieces, which exhibits the general character of the object fairly well."

He picked out the little irregular-shaped object and handed it to me, and I could not but admire the neatness with which Polton had joined the little fragments together.

"It was not a lens," I pronounced, holding it up before my eyes and moving it to and fro as I looked through it.

"And so can not have been a spectacle glass. But the surface was curved—one side convex and the other concave—and the little piece that remains of the original edge seems to have been ground to fit a bezel or frame. I should say that these are portions of a small watch-glass."

"I am submitting the problem for solution by my learned brother," he replied with an exasperating smile.

"You had better be careful!" I exclaimed, clapping the lid on to the box and pushing it across to him. "If I am tried beyond endurance I may be tempted to set a booby-trap to catch a medical jurist. And where will your reputation be then?"

"Your suggestion has certainly extensive possibilities in the way of farce," he admitted "and I tremble at your threat. But I must write my letter to Marchmont and we will go out and lay the mine in the Fleet Street post-box. I should like to be in his office when it explodes."

"I expect, for that matter," said I, "the explosion will soon be felt pretty distinctly in these chambers."

"I expect so, too," replied Thorndyke. "And that reminds me that I shall be out all day to-morrow, so, if Marchmont calls and seems at all urgent, you might invite him to look in after dinner and talk the case over."

I promised to do so and hoped sincerely that the solicitor would accept the invitation; for I, at any rate, was on tenterhooks of curiosity to hear my colleague's views on Jeffrey Blackmore's will.

XV. — A CALL FROM THE LAWYERS

MY friend's expectations in respect to Mr. Marchmont were fully realized, for on the following morning, within an hour of his departure from the chambers, the knocker was plied with more than usual emphasis and, on my opening the door, I discovered the solicitor in company with a somewhat older gentleman. Mr. Marchmont appeared rather out of humor, while his companion was obviously in a state of extreme irritation.

"Howdy-do, Dr. Jervis?" said Marchmont, as he entered at my invitation. "Your colleague, I suppose, is not in just now?"

"Hm; I'm sorry. We wished to see him rather particularly. This is my partner, Mr. Winwood."

"We have had a letter from Mr. Thorndyke, and it is, I may say, a rather curious letter—in fact, a very singular letter indeed."

"No, no, Winwood, don't say that; but it is really rather incomprehensible. It relates to the will of the late Jeffrey Blackmore—you know the main facts of the case—and we can not reconcile it with those facts."

"This is the letter," exclaimed Mr. Winwood, dragging the document from his wallet and slapping it down on the table. "If you are acquainted with the case, sir, just read that and let us hear what you think."

Jeffrey Blackmore, decd.: I have gone into this case with some care and have now no doubt that the second will is a forgery. I therefore suggest that, pending the commencement of criminal proceedings, you lose no time in entering a caveat, and I will furnish you with particulars in due course.

"Well!" exclaimed Mr. Winwood, glaring ferociously at me, "what do you think of the learned counsel's opinion'?"

"I knew that Thorndyke was writing to you to this effect," I replied "but I must frankly confess that I can make nothing of it. Have you acted on his advice?"

"Certainly not!" shouted the irascible lawyer. "Do you suppose we wish to make ourselves the laughing-stock of the courts? The thing is impossible—ridiculously impossible!"

"It can't be that, you know," said I a little stiffly, for I was somewhat nettled by Mr. Winwood's manner, "or Thorndyke would not have written this letter. You had better see him and let him give you the particulars, as he suggests. Could you look in this evening after dinner—say at eight o'clock?"

"It is very inconvenient," grumbled Mr. Winwood; "we should have to dine in town."

"Yes, but it will be the best plan," said Marchmont. "We can bring Mr. Stephen Blackmore with us and hear what Dr. Thorndyke has done. Of course, if what he says is correct, Mr. Stephen's position is totally changed."

"Bah!" exclaimed Winwood, "he has found a mare's-nest, I tell you. However, I suppose we must come, and we will bring Mr. Stephen by all means. The oracle's explanation should be worth hearing—to a man of leisure, at any rate."

With this the two lawyers took their departure, leaving me to meditate upon my colleague's astonishing statement, which I did, considerably to the prejudice of other employment. That Thorndyke would be able to justify the opinion he had given I had no doubt whatever; yet there was no denying that the thing was, upon the face of it, as Mr. Winwood had said, "ridiculously impossible."

When Thorndyke returned I acquainted him with the visit of the two lawyers, and also with the sentiments they had expressed, whereat he smiled with quiet amusement.

"I thought that letter would bring Marchmont to our door before long," said he. "As to Winwood, I have never met him, so he promises to give us what the variety artists would call an 'extra turn.' And what do you think of the affair yourself?"

"I have given it up," I answered, "and feel as if I had taken an overdose of Cannabis Indica."

Thorndyke laughed. "Come and dine," said he, "and let us crack a bottle, that our hearts may not turn to water under the frown of the disdainful Winwood."

He rang the bell for Polton, and when that ingenious person made his appearance, said:

"I expect that a man named Walker will call presently, Polton. If he does, take him to your room and detain him till I send for him."

We now betook ourselves to a certain old-world tavern in Fleet Street at which it was our custom occasionally to dine and where on the present occasion certain little extra touches gave a more than unusually festive character to our repast. Thorndyke was in excellent spirits, under the influence of which—and a bottle—he discoursed brilliantly on the evidence of the persistence of ancient racial types in modern populations, until the clock of the Law Courts, chiming three-quarters, warned us to return home.

XVI. — SOME SINGULAR FACTS

WE had not been back in the chambers more than a few minutes when the little brass knocker announced the arrival of our visitors. Thorndyke himself admitted them and then closed the oak.

"We felt that we must come round and hear a few particulars from you," said Mr. Marchmont, whose manner was now somewhat flurried and uneasy. "We could not quite understand your letter."

"I should say, rather," exclaimed Mr. Winwood with some heat, "that the conclusion was a palpably ridiculous one."

"That," replied Thorndyke suavely, "can perhaps be better determined after examining all the facts that led up to it."

"No doubt, sir," retorted Mr. Winwood, growing suddenly red and wrathful, "but I speak as a solicitor who was practising in the law when you were an infant in arms! You say that this will is a forgery. I would remind you, sir, that it was executed in broad daylight in the presence of two unimpeachable witnesses, who have not only sworn to their signatures but, one of whom—the house-painter—obligingly left four greasy finger-prints on the document, for subsequent identification, if necessary!"

"After the excellent custom of the Chinese," observed Thorndyke. "Have you verified those finger-prints?"

"No. The fact is they are of no interest to me, as I am not disputing the witnesses' signatures."

"Marchmont," he exclaimed fiercely, "this is a mere hoax! This gentleman has brought us here to make fools of us!"

"But, confound it!" roared Winwood, "you yourself have heard him say that the will is a forgery, but that he doesn't dispute the signatures, which," concluded Winwood, banging his fist down upon the table, "is—nonsense!"

"May I suggest," interposed Stephen Blackmore, "that we came here to listen to Dr. Thorndyke's explanation of his letter? Perhaps it would be better to postpone any comments until we have heard it."

"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly," said Marchmont. "Let me beg you, Winwood, to listen patiently and refrain from interruption until we have our learned friend's exposition of his opinion."

He sank into a chair with the manner of a man who shuts himself up and turns the key, and so remained throughout most of the subsequent proceedings, stony and impassive like a seated effigy at the portal of some Egyptian tomb. The other men also seated themselves, as did I, too, and Thorndyke, having laid on the table a small heap of documents, began without preamble.

"There are two ways in which I might lay the case before you," said he. "I might state my theory of the sequence of events and furnish the verification afterward, or I might retrace the actual course of my investigations and give you the facts in the order in which I obtained them myself, with the inferences from them. Which will you have first—the theory or the investigation?"

"Oh,—the theory!" growled Mr. Winwood, and shut him-self up again with a snap.

"Perhaps it would be better," said Marchmont, "if we heard the whole argument from the beginning."

"I think," agreed Thorndyke, "that that method will enable you to grasp the evidence more easily. Now, when you and Mr. Stephen placed the outline of the case before me, there were certain curious features in it which attracted my attention, as they had, no doubt, attracted yours. In the first place, there was the strange circumstance that the second will should have been made at all, its provisions being, under the conditions then existing, practically identical with the first, so that the trifling alteration could have been met easily by a codicil. There was also the fact that the second will—making John Blackmore the residuary legatee—was obviously less in accordance with the intentions of the testator, so far as they may be judged, than the first one.

"The next thing that arrested my attention was the mode of death of Mrs. Wilson. She died of cancer. Now cancer is one of the few diseases of which the fatal termination can be predicted with certainty months before its occurrence, and its date fixed, in suitable cases, with considerable accuracy.

"And now observe the remarkable series of coincidences that are brought into light when we consider this peculiarity of the disease. Mrs. Wilson died on the twenty-fourth of March, 1900, having made her will two years previously. Mr. Jeffrey's second will was signed on the ninth of December, 1899—at a time, that is to say, when the existence of cancer must have been known to Mrs. Wilson's doctor, and might have been known to Mr. Jeffrey himself or any person interested. Yet it is practically certain that Mr. Jeffrey had no intention of bequeathing the bulk of his property to his brother John, as he did by executing this second will.

"Next, you will observe that the remarkable change in Mr. Jeffrey's habits coincides with the same events; for he came over from Nice, where he had been residing for a year—having stored his furniture meanwhile—and took up his residence at New Inn in September 1899, at a time when the nature of Mrs. Wilson's complaint must almost certainly have been known. At the same time, as I shall presently demonstrate to you, a distinct and quite sudden change took place in the character of his signature.

"I would next draw your attention to the singularly opportune date of his death, in reference to this will. Mrs. Wilson died upon the twenty-fourth of March. Mr. Jeffrey was found dead upon the twenty-seventh of March, and he was seen alive upon the twenty-sixth. If he had died only four days sooner, Mrs. Wilson's property would not have devolved upon him at all. If he had lived a few days longer, it is probable that he would have made a new will in his nephew's favor. Circumstances, therefore, conspired in the most singular manner in favor of Mr. John Blackmore.

"Mr. Jeffrey's body was found on the twenty-seventh of March, and then by the merest chance. It might have remained undiscovered for weeks—or even months; and if this had happened, it is certain that Mrs. Wilson's next of kin would have disputed John Blackmore's claim—most probably with success—on the grounds that Mr. Jeffrey died before Mrs. Wilson. But all this uncertainty and difficulty was prevented by the circumstance that Mr. Jeffrey paid his rent personally to the porter on the twenty-sixth, so establishing the fact beyond question that he was alive on that date.

"Thus, by a series of coincidences, John Blackmore is enabled to inherit the fortune of a man who, almost certainly, had no intention of bequeathing it to him."

Thorndyke paused, and Mr. Marchmont, who had listened with close attention, nodded as he glanced at his silent partner.

"You have stated the case with remarkable lucidity," he said, "and I am free to confess that some of the points you have raised had escaped my notice."

"Well, then," resumed Thorndyke, "to continue: The facts with which you furnished me, when thus collated, made it evident that the case was a very singular one, and it appeared to me that a case presenting such a series of coincidences in favor of one of the parties should be viewed with some suspicion and subjected to very close examination. But these facts yielded no further conclusion, and it was clear that no progress could be made until we had obtained some fresh data.

"In what direction, however, these new facts were to be looked for did not for the moment appear. Indeed, it seemed as if the inquiry had come to a full stop.

"But there is one rule which I follow religiously in all my investigations, and that is to collect facts of all kinds in any way related to the case in hand, no matter how trivial they may be or how apparently irrelevant."

XVII. — THE MAN IN NEW INN

"NOW, in pursuance of this rule, I took an opportunity, which offered, of looking over the chambers in New Inn, which had been left untouched since the death of their occupant, and I had hardly entered the rooms when I made a very curious discovery. On the wall hung a framed photograph of an ancient Persian inscription in cuneiform characters."

The expectant look which had appeared on Mr. Marchmont's face changed suddenly to one of disappointment, as he remarked:

"My uncle was greatly interested in cuneiform texts, as I think I mentioned," said Stephen Blackmore. "I seem to remember this photograph, too—it used to stand on the mantelpiece in his old rooms, I believe."

"Very probably," replied Thorndyke. "Well, it hung on the wall at New Inn, and it was hung upside-down."

"Very odd indeed," agreed Thorndyke. "The inscription, I find, was one of the first to be deciphered. From it Grotefend, with incredible patience and skill, managed to construct a number of the hitherto unknown signs. Now is it not an astonishing thing that an Oriental scholar, setting so much store by this monument of human ingenuity that he has a photograph of it framed, should then hang that photograph upon his wall upside-down?"

"I see your point," said Marchmont, "and I certainly agree with you that the circumstance is strongly suggestive of the decay of the mental faculties."

"The way in which it came to be inverted is pretty obvious. The photograph had evidently been in the frame some years, but had never been hung up until lately, for the plates by which it was suspended were new; and when I unscrewed one, I found the wood underneath as dark and time-stained as elsewhere; and there were no other marks of plates or rings.

"The frame-maker had, however, pasted his label on the back of the frame, and as this label hung the right way up, it appeared as if the person who fixed on the plates had adopted it as a guide."

"Possibly," said Mr. Marchmont somewhat impatiently. "But these facts, though doubtless very curious and interesting, do not seem to have much bearing upon the genuineness of the late Mr. Blackmore's will."

"On the contrary," replied Thorndyke, "they appeared to me to be full of significance. However, I will return to the chambers presently, and I will now demonstrate to you that the alteration, which you have told me had been noticed at the bank, in the character of Mr. Jeffrey's signature, occurred at the time that I mentioned and was quite an abrupt change."

He drew from his little pile of documents the photographs of the checks and handed them to our visitors, by whom they were examined with varying degrees of interest.

"You will see," said he, "that the change took place between the twenty-ninth of September and the eighteenth of October and was, therefore, coincident in time with the other remarkable changes in the habits of the deceased."

"Yes, I see that," replied Mr. Marchmont, "and no doubt the fact would be of some importance if there were any question as to the genuineness of the testator's signature. But there is not. The signature of the will was witnessed, and the witnesses have been produced."

"Whence it follows," added Mr. Winwood, "that all this hairsplitting is entirely irrelevant and, in fact, so much waste of time."

"If you will note the facts that I am presenting to you," said Thorndyke, "and postpone your conclusions and comments until I have finished, you will have a better chance of grasping the case as a whole. I will now relate to you a very strange adventure which befell Dr. Jervis."

He then proceeded to recount the incidents connected with my visits to the mysterious patient in Kennington Lane, including the construction of the chart, presenting the latter for the inspection of his hearers. To this recital our three visitors listened in utter bewilderment, as, indeed, did I also; for I could not conceive in what way my adventures could be related to the affairs of the late Mr. Blackmore. This was manifestly the view taken by Mr. Marchmont, for during a pause, in which the chart was handed to him, he remarked somewhat stiffly:

"I am assuming, Dr. Thorndyke, that the curious story you are telling us has some relevance to the matter in which we are interested."

"You are quite correct in your assumption," replied Thorndyke. "The story is very relevant indeed, as you will presently be convinced."

"Thank you," said Marchmont, sinking back once more into his chair with a sigh of resignation.

"A few days ago," pursued Thorndyke, "Dr. Jervis and I located, with the aid of this chart, the house to which he had been called. We found that it was to let, the recent tenant having left hurriedly, so, when we had obtained the keys, we entered and explored in accordance with the rule that I mentioned just now."

Here he gave a brief account of our visit and the conditions that we observed, and was proceeding to furnish a list of the articles that he had found, when Mr. Winwood started from his chair.

"Good heavens, sir!" he exclaimed, "have I come here, at great personal inconvenience, to hear you read the inventory of a dust-heap?"

"You came by your own wish," replied Thorndyke, "and I may add that you are not being forcibly detained."

"We will now," pursued Thorndyke with unmoved serenity, "consider the significance of these relics and we will begin with this pair of spectacles. They belonged to a person who was near-sighted and astigmatic in the left eye and almost certainly blind in the right. Such a description agrees entirely with Dr. Jervis's account of the sick man."

"We next come to this little bamboo stick. It is part of a Japanese brush, such as is used for writing in Chinese ink or for making small drawings."

Again he paused as though expecting some remark from his listeners; but no one spoke, and he continued:

"Then there is this bottle with the theatrical wig-maker's label on it, which once contained cement. Its presence suggests some person who was accustomed to 'make up' with a false mustache or beard. You have heard Dr. Jervis's account of Mr. Morgan and his coachman, and will agree with me that the circumstances bear out this suggestion."

He paused once more and looked round expectantly at his audience, none of whom, however, volunteered any remark.

"Do none of these objects that I have described seem to have any suggestion for us?" he asked in a tone of some surprise.

"They convey nothing to me," said Mr. Marchmont, glancing at his partner, who shook his head like a restive horse.

"No," replied Stephen, "unless you mean to suggest that the sick man was my Uncle Jeffrey."

"That is precisely what I do mean to suggest," rejoined Thorndyke. "I had formed that opinion, indeed, before I saw them and I need not say how much they strengthened it."

"And," interrupted Thorndyke, "from the same cause— dislocation of the crystalline lens."

"Possibly. And he probably used such a brush as you found, since I know that he corresponded in Japanese with his native friends in Tokyo. But this is surely very slender evidence."

"Moreover," said Marchmont, "there is the insuperable objection that Mr. Jeffrey was living at New Inn at this time."

"Evidence!" exclaimed Marchmont impatiently. "Why, my dear sir—" he paused suddenly and, leaning forward, regarded Thorndyke with a new and rather startled expression,"—you mean to suggest—" he began.

"I suggest to you what that inverted inscription suggested to me—that the person who occupied those chambers in New Inn was not Jeffrey Blackmore!"

XVIII. — THORNDYKE EXPLAINS

THE lawyer appeared thunderstruck. "This is an amazing proposition!" he exclaimed. "Yet the thing is certainly not impossible, for now that you recall the fact, no one who had known him previously ever saw him at the Inn! The question of identity was never raised!"

"Excepting," said Mr. Winwood, "in regard to the body; which was certainly that of Jeffrey Blackmore."

"Yes, of course," said Marchmont; "I had forgotten that for the moment. The body was identified beyond doubt. You don't dispute the identity of the body, do you?"

"Then for heaven's sake, tell us what you do mean, for I must confess that I am completely bewildered in this tangle of mysteries and contradictions!"

"It is certainly an intricate case," said Thorndyke, "but I think that you will find it comes together very completely. I have described to you my preliminary observations in the order in which I made them and have given you a hint of the nature of my inferences. Now I will lay before you the hypothesis that I have formed as to what were the actual occurrences in this mysterious case.

"It appeared to me probable that John Blackmore must have come to know, in some way, of the will that Mrs. Wilson had made in his brother's favor and that he kept himself informed as to the state of her health. When it became known to him that she was suffering from cancer, and that her death was likely to take place within a certain number of months, I think that he conceived the scheme that he subsequently carried out with such remarkable success.

"In September of 1899, Jeffrey Blackmore returned from Nice, and I think that John must have met him and either drugged him then and there and carried him to Kennington Lane, or induced him to go voluntarily. Once in the house and shut up in that dungeon-like bedroom, it would be easy to administer morphia—in small quantities at first and in larger doses afterward, as toleration of the drug became established."

"Certainly. Small doses could be conveyed in food and drink, or administered during sleep, and then, you know, the morphia habit is quickly formed and, once it was established, the unfortunate man would probably take the drug voluntarily. Moreover this drug-habit weakens the will and paralyzes the mental faculties to an extraordinary degree—which was probably the principal object in using it.

"John Blackmore's intention, on this hypothesis, would be to keep his brother in a state of continual torpor and mental enfeeblement as long as Mrs. Wilson remained alive, so that the woman, his accomplice, could manage the prisoner, leaving him, John, free to play his part elsewhere.

"As soon he had thus secured his unfortunate brother, I suggest that this ingenious villain engaged the chambers at New Inn. In order to personate his brother, he must have shaved off his mustache and beard and worn spectacles; and these spectacles introduce a very curious and interesting feature into the case.

"To the majority of people the wearing of spectacles, for the purpose of disguise or personation, seems a perfectly simple and easy proceeding. But to a person of normal eyesight it is nothing of the kind; for if he wears spectacles suited for long sight, he is unable to see distinctly through them at all, while if he wears even weak concave or near-sight glasses, the effort to see through them soon produces such strain and fatigue that his eyes become disabled altogether. On the stage, of course, the difficulty is got over quite simply by using spectacles of plain window-glass, but in ordinary life this would hardly do; the 'property' spectacles would probably be noticed and give rise to suspicion.

"The personator would, therefore, be in this dilemma: if he wore actual spectacles he would not be able to see through them, while if he wore sham spectacles of plain glass his disguise might be detected. There is only one way out of the difficulty, and that not a very satisfactory one, but Mr. J. Morgan seems to have adopted it in lieu of a better.

"We have learned from Dr. Jervis that this gentleman wore spectacles and that these spectacles seemed to have had very peculiar optical properties; for while the image of the candle-flame reflected in them was inverted, showing that one surface at least was concave, my colleague observed that objects seen through them appeared quite free from distortion or change of size, as if seen through plain glass. But there is only one kind of glass which could possess these optical properties, and that is a plain glass with curved surfaces like an ordinary watch-glass."

I started when Thorndyke reached this point, and thought of the contents of the cardboard box, which I now saw was among the objects on the table.

"Yes," replied Mr. Marchmont, "I think I follow you, though I do not see the application of all this."

"That will appear presently. For the present we may take it that Mr. J. Morgan wore spectacles of this peculiar character, presumably for the purposes of disguise; and I am assuming, for the purposes of the argument, that Mr. J. Morgan and Mr. John Blackmore are one and the same."

"And now," continued Thorndyke, disregarding the last remark, "to return from this digression to John Blackmore's proceedings. I imagine that he spent very little time at the Inn—for the porter saw him only occasionally and believed him to be frequently absent—and when he was at Kennington Lane or at his office in the city, or elsewhere, he would replace his beard with a false one of the same appearance, which would require to be fixed on securely and finished round the edges with short hairs cemented to the skin—for an ordinary theatrical beard would be detected instantly in daylight.

"He would now commence experiments in forging his brother's handwriting, which he must have practised previously to have obtained Jeffrey's furniture from the repository where it was stored. The difference was observed at the bank, as Mr. Marchmont has told us, but the imitation was close enough not to arouse suspicion.

"The next thing was to make the fresh will and get it witnessed; and this was managed with such adroitness that, although neither of the witnesses had ever seen Jeffrey Blackmore, their identification has been accepted without question. It is evident that, when shaved, John Blackmore must have resembled his brother pretty closely or he would never have attempted to carry out this scheme, and he will have calculated, with much acuteness, that the porter, when called in to identify the body, would observe only the resemblance and would disregard any apparent difference in appearance.

"The position in which John Blackmore was now placed was one of extraordinary difficulty. His brother was immured in Kennington Lane, but, owing to the insecurity of his prison and the frequent absence of his jailer, this confinement could be maintained with safety only by keeping the imprisoned man continuously under the influence of full doses of morphia.

"This constant drugging must have been highly injurious to the health of a delicate man like Jeffrey and, as time went on, there must have loomed up the ever-increasing danger that he might die before the appointed time; in which event John would be involved in a double catastrophe, for, on the one hand, the will would now be useless, and, on the other, the crime would be almost inevitably discovered.

"It was, no doubt, with this danger in view that John called in Dr. Jervis—making, as it turned out, a very unsuitable choice. My colleague's assistance was invoked, no doubt, partly to keep the victim alive and partly in the hope that if that were impossible, he might be prepared to cover the crime with a death-certificate.

"We are now approaching the end of the tragedy. Mrs. Wilson died on the twenty-fourth of March. Circumstances point to the conclusion that the murder took place on the evening of the twenty-sixth. Now on that day, about half-past six in the evening, the supposed Jeffrey Blackmore entered New Inn in a four-wheeled cab, as you are aware, his face being seen at the window by the porter as the vehicle passed the lodge under the archway. There was a dense fog at the time, so the cab would be lost to sight as soon as it entered the Square. At this time the offices at No. 31 would be empty and not a soul present in the house to witness the arrival.

"From the first time that my suspicions took definite shape that cab seemed to me to hold the key to the mystery. There can be no doubt that it contained two people—one of them was John Blackmore, whose face was seen at the window, and the other, his victim, the unfortunate Jeffrey.

"As to what happened in that silent house there is no need to speculate. The peculiar vertical manner in which the needle of the syringe was introduced is naturally explained by the fact of its being thrust through the clothing, and we can not but admire the cool calculation with which the appliances of murder were left to give color to the idea of suicide.

"Having committed the crime, the murderer presently walked out and showed himself at the lodge, under the pretext of paying the rent, thus furnishing proof of survival in respect to Mrs. Wilson. After this he returned to the Inn, but not to the chambers, for there is a postern-gate, as you know, opening into Houghton Street. Through this, no doubt, the murderer left the Inn, and vanished, to reappear at the inquest unrecognizable in his beard, his padded clothing and eyes uncovered by spectacles.

"With regard to the identification of the body by the porter there is, as I have said, no mystery. There must have been a considerable resemblance between the two brothers, and the porter, taking it for granted that the body was that of his tenant, would naturally recognize it as such, for even if he had noticed any departure from the usual appearance, he would attribute the difference to changes produced by death.

"Such, gentlemen, is my theory of the circumstances that surrounded the death of Jeffrey Blackmore, and I shall be glad to hear any comments that you may have to make."

XIX. — STEP BY STEP

THERE was an interval of silence after Thorndyke had finished which was at last broken by Mr. Winwood.

"I must admit, sir," said he, "that you have displayed extraordinary ingenuity in the construction of the astonishing story you have told us, and that this story, if it were true, would dispose satisfactorily of every difficulty and obscure point in the case. But is it true? It seems to me to be a matter of pure conjecture, woven most ingeniously around a few slightly suggestive facts. And, seeing that it involves a charge of murder of a most diabolical character against Mr. John Blackmore, nothing but the most conclusive proof would justify us in entertaining it."

"It is not conjecture," said Thorndyke, "although it was so at first. But when I had formed a hypothesis which fitted the facts known to me, I proceeded to test it and have now no doubt that it is correct."

"Would you mind laying before us any new facts that you have discovered which tend to confirm your theory?" said Mr. Marchmont.

"I will place the entire mass of evidence before you," said Thorndyke, "and then I think you will have no more doubts than I have.

"You will observe that there are four points which require to be proved: The first is the identity of Jeffrey with the sick man of Kennington Lane; the second is the identity of Mr. J. Morgan with John Blackmore; the third is the identity of John Blackmore with the tenant of 31 New Inn, and the fourth is the presence together of John and Jeffrey Blackmore at the chambers on the night of the latter gentleman's death.

"We will take the first point. Here are the spectacles I found in the empty house. I tested them optically with great care and measured them minutely and wrote down on this piece of paper then-description. I will read it to you:

"Spectacles for distance, curl sides, steel frames, Stopford's pattern, with gold plate under bridge. Distance between centers, 6.2 cm. Right eye plain glass. Left eye—3D spherical—2D cylindrical, axis 35°.

"Now spectacles of this pattern are, I believe, made only by Cuxton & Parry of New Bond Street. I therefore wrote to Mr. Cuxton, who knows me, and asked if he had supplied spectacles to the late Jeffrey Blackmore, Esq., and, if so, whether he would send me a description of them, together with the name of the oculist who prescribed them.

"He replied, in this letter here, that he had supplied spectacles to the late Jeffrey Blackmore and described them thus:

"The spectacles were for distance and had steel frames of Stopford's pattern, with curl sides and a gold plate under the bridge. The formula, which was from Mr. Hindley's prescription, was R.E. plain glass. L.E.—3D sph.—2D cyl., axis 35°.

"You see the descriptions are identical. I then wrote to Mr. Hindley, asking certain questions, to which he replied thus:

"You are quite right; Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore had a tremulous iris in his right eye (which was practically blind) due to dislocation of the lens. The pupils were rather large, certainly not contracted.

"Thus, you see, the description of the deceased tallies with that of the sick man as given by Dr. Jervis, excepting that there was then no sign of his being addicted to taking morphia. One more item of evidence I have on this point, and it is one that will appeal to the legal mind.

"A few days ago, I wrote to Mr. Stephen, asking him whether he possessed a recent photograph of his Uncle Jeffrey. He had one and sent it to me by return. This portrait I showed to Dr. Jervis, asking him if he recognised the person. After examining it attentively, without any hint from me, he identified it as a portrait of the sick man of Kennington Lane."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mr. Marchmont. "This is most important. Are you prepared to swear to the resemblance, Dr. Jervis?"

"Well, that is all the evidence I have on the first point," said Thorndyke, "but, to my mind, it constitutes practically conclusive proof of identity."

"Now, as to the second point—the identity of John Blackmore with Mr. J. Morgan of Kennington Lane. To begin with the prima facie probabilities, in relation to certain assumed data. If we assume:

"3. That the poison was being administered by J. Morgan, as suggested by his manifest disguise and the strange secrecy of his conduct;

"And if we then ask ourselves who could have a motive for causing the death of Mr. Jeffrey in this manner and at this time, the answer is John Blackmore, the principal beneficiary under the very unstable second will. The most obvious hypothesis, then, is that Mr. J. Morgan and John Blackmore were one and the same person."

"Exactly; as every hypothesis must be until it has been tested and verified. And now for the facts that tend to support this hypothesis. The first item—a very small one—I picked up when I called on the doctor who had attended Mrs. Wilson. My object was to obtain particulars as to her illness and death, but, incidentally, I discovered that he was well acquainted with John Blackmore and had treated him—without operation and, therefore, without cure—for a nasal polypus. You will remember that Mr. J. Morgan appeared to have a nasal polypus. I may mention, by the way, that John Blackmore had been aware of Mrs. Wilson's state of health from the onset of her symptoms and kept himself informed as to her progress. Moreover, at his request a telegram was sent to his office in Copthall Avenue, announcing her death.

"The next item of evidence is more important. I made a second visit to the house-agent at Kennington for the purpose of obtaining, if possible, the names and addresses of the persons who had been mentioned as references when Mr. Morgan took the house. I ascertained that only one reference had been given—the intending tenant's stockbroker; and the name of that stockbroker was John Blackmore of Copthall Avenue."

"Yes," answered Thorndyke, "and it would be interesting to confront John Blackmore with this house-agent, who would have seen him with his beard on. Well, that is all the evidence that I have on this point. It is far from conclusive by itself, but, such as it is, it tends to support the hypothesis that J. Morgan and John Black-more were one and the same.

"I will now pass on to the evidence of the third point—the identity of John Blackmore with the tenant of New Inn.

"With reference to the inverted inscription, that furnishes indirect evidence only. It suggests that the tenant was not Jeffrey. But, if not Jeffrey, it was some one who was personating him; and that some one must have resembled him closely enough for the personation to remain undetected even on the production of Jeffrey's body. But the only person known to us who answers this description is John Blackmore.

"Again, the individual who personated Jeffrey must have had some strong motive for doing do. But the only person known to us who could have had any such motive is John Blackmore.

"The next item of evidence on this point is also merely suggestive and indirect, though to me it was of the greatest value, since it furnished the first link in the chain of evidence connecting Jeffrey Blackmore with the sick man of Kennington. On the floor of the bedroom in New Inn I found the shattered remains of a small glass object which had been trodden on. Here are some of the fragments in this box, and you will see that we have joined a few of them together to help us in our investigations.

"My assistant, who was formerly a watch-maker, judged them to be fragments of the thin crystal glass of a lady's watch, and that, I think, was also Dr. Jervis's opinion. But the small part which remains of the original edge furnishes proof in two respects that this was not a watch-glass. In the first place, on taking a careful tracing of this piece of the edge, I found that its curve was part of an ellipse; but watch-glasses, nowadays, are invariably circular. In the second place, watch-glasses are ground on the edge to a single bevel to snap into the bezel or frame; but the edge of this is ground to a double bevel, like the edge of a spectacle-glass which fits into a groove and is held in position by a screw.

"The unavoidable inference is that this was a spectacle-glass, but, since it had the optical properties of plain glass, it could not have been used to assist vision and was therefore presumably intended for the purpose of disguise. Now you will remember that Mr. J. Morgan wore spectacles having precisely the optical properties of a crystal watch-glass, and it was this fact that first suggested to me a possible connection between New Inn and Kennington Lane."

"By the way," said Stephen Blackmore, "you said that my uncle had plain glass in one side of his spectacles'?"

"Yes," replied Thorndyke; "over his blind eye. But that was actually plain glass with flat surfaces, not curved like this one. I should like to observe, with reference to this spectacle-glass, that its importance as a clue is much greater than might, at first sight, appear. The spectacles worn by Mr. Morgan were not merely peculiar or remarkable; they were probably unique. It is exceedingly likely that there is not, in the whole world, another similar pair of spectacles. Hence, the finding of this broken glass does really establish a considerable probability that J. Morgan was, at some time, in the chambers in New Inn. But we have seen that it is highly probable that J. Morgan was, in fact, John Blackmore, wherefore the presence of this glass is evidence suggesting that John Black-more is the man who personated Jeffrey at New Inn.

"You will have observed, no doubt, that the evidence on the second and third points is by no means conclusive when taken separately, but I think you will agree that the whole body of circumstantial evidence is very strong and might easily be strengthened by further investigation."

"Yes," said Marchmont, "I think we may admit that there is enough evidence to make your theory a possible and even a probable one; and if you can show that there are any good grounds for believing that John and Jeffrey Blackmore were together in the chambers on the evening of the twenty-sixth of March, I should say that you had made out a prima facie case. What say you, Winwood?"

"Very well," said Thorndyke, "you shall. And, what is more, you shall have it first-hand."

XX. — THE ENEMY DECIDES

HE pressed the button of the electric bell three times and, after a short interval, Polton let himself in with his latch-key and beckoned to some one on the landing.

"Here is Walker, sir," said he, and he then retired, shutting the oak after him and leaving a seedy-looking stranger standing near the door and gazing at the assembled company with a mixture of embarrassment and defiance.

"Sit down, Walker," said Thorndyke, placing a chair for him. "I want you to answer a few questions for the information of these gentlemen."

"My occupation, sir, don't agree with my name at all, because I drives a cab—a four-wheeled cab is what I drives—and a uncommon dry job it is, let me tell you."

Acting on this delicate hint, Thorndyke mixed a stiff whisky and soda and passed it across to the cabman, who consumed half at a single gulp and then peered thoughtfully into the tumbler.

"Rum stuff, this soda-water," he remarked. "Makes it taste as if there wasn't no whisky in it."

"Rather. It was the twenty-sixth of March. I remember it because my benefit society came down on me for arrears that morning."

"Will you tell us now what happened to you between six and seven in the evening of that day?"

"I will," replied the cabman, emptying his tumbler by way of bracing himself up for the effort. "I drove a fare to Vauxhall Station and got there a little before six. As I didn't pick up no one there, I drove away and was just turning down Upper Kennington Lane when I see two gentlemen standing at the corner by Harleyford Road, and one of 'em hails me, so I pulls up by the curb. One of 'em seemed to be drunk, for the other one was holding him up, but he might have been feeling queer—it wasn't no affair of mine.

"But the rum thing about 'em was that they was as like as two peas. Their faces was alike, their clothes was alike, they wore the same kind of hats and they both had spectacles. 'Wot O!' says I to myself, ''ere's the Siamese Twins out on the jamboree!' Well, the gent what wasn't drunk he opens the door and shoves in the other one what was, and he says to me, he says: 'Do you know New Inn?' he says. Now there was a—silly question to ask a man what was born and brought up in White Horse Alley, Drury Lane. 'Do I know my grandmother?' says I.

"'Of course I shall,' I says. 'Did you think I was going to drive in the back way down the steps?' I says.

"'And then,' he says, 'you drive down the Square nearly to the end and you'll see a house with a large brass plate at the corner of the doorway. That's where we want to be set down,' he says. With that he nips in and pulls up the windows and off we goes.

"It took us nigh upon half an hour to get to New Inn through the fog, and as I drove in under the archway I saw it was half-past six by the clock in the porter's lodge. I drove down nearly to the end of the square and drew up opposite a house where there was a large brass plate by the doorway. Then the gent what was sober jumps out and begins hauling out the other one. I was just getting down off the box to help him when he says, rather short-like:

"The other gent seemed to have gone to sleep, and a rare job he had hauling him across the pavement. I see them, by the gas-lamps on the staircase, going up-stairs—regular Pilgrim's Progress it was, I tell you—but they got up at last, for I saw 'em light the gas in a room on the second floor. Then I drove off."

"What inquest?" inquired the cabman. "I don't know nothing about any inquest. The first I heard of the business was when one of our men told me yesterday about a notice what was stuck up in a shelter offering a reward for information concerning a four-wheel cab what drove to New Inn at six-thirty on the day of the fog at the end of last month. Then I came here and left a message, and this morning this gentleman came to me on the rank and paid up like a gentleman."

The latter ceremony was now repeated, and the cabman, having remarked that his services were at the disposal of the present company to an unlimited extent on the same terms, departed, beaming with satisfaction.

When he had gone, our three visitors sat for awhile looking at one another in silence. At length Stephen Blackmore rose with a stern expression on his pale face and said to Thorndyke:

"The police must be informed of this at once. I shall never be able to rest until I know that justice has been dealt out to this cold-hearted, merciless villain!"

"The police have already been informed," said Thorndyke. "I completed the case this morning and at once communicated with Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard. A warrant was obtained immediately and I had expected to hear that the arrest had been made long before this, for Mr. Miller is usually most punctilious in keeping me informed of the progress of cases which I introduce to him. We shall hear to-morrow, no doubt."

"And for the present the case seems to have passed out of our hands," observed Mr. Marchmont.

"Why, that doesn't seem very necessary," said Marchmont. "The evidence that we have heard is enough to secure a conviction, and there will be plenty more when the police go into the case. And a conviction would, of course, put an end to the second will."

As the two partners showed a disposition to become heated over this question, Thorndyke suggested that they might discuss it at leisure by the light of subsequent events.

Taking this as a hint, for it was now close upon midnight, our visitors prepared to depart and were, in fact, making their way towards the door, when the bell rang.

Thorndyke hastily dung open the door and, as he recognized his visitor, uttered an exclamation of satisfaction.

"Ha! Mr. Miller, we were just speaking' of you. This is Mr. Stephen Blackmore, and these gentlemen are Messrs. Marchmont and Winwood, his solicitors, and my colleague, Dr. Jervis."

"Well, Doctor, I have just dropped in to give you the news, which will interest these gentlemen as well as yourself."

"Yes. It happened this way. We went down to his place at Surbiton early this morning, but it seemed he had just left for town, so we took the next train and went straight to his office. But they must have smoked us and sent him a wire, for, just as we were approaching the office, a man answering the description ran out, jumped into a hansom and drove off like the devil.

"We chanced its being the right man and followed at a run, hailing the first hansom that we met; but he had a good start and his cabby had a good horse, so that we had all our work cut out to keep him in sight. We followed him over Blackfriars Bridge and down Stamford Street to Waterloo; but as we drove up the slope to the station we met a cab coming down and, as the cabby kissed his hand and smiled at us, we concluded it was the one we had been following.

"I remembered that the Southampton Express was due to start about this time, so we made for the platform and, just as the guard was about to blow his whistle, we saw a man bolt through the barrier and run up the platform. We dashed through a few seconds later and just managed to get on the train as it was moving off. But he had seen us, for his head was out of the window when we jumped in, and we kept a sharp lookout on both sides in case he should hop out again before the train got up speed.

"However, he didn't, and nothing more happened until we stopped at Southampton. You may be sure we lost no time in getting out and we ran up the platform, expecting to see him make a rush for the barrier. But there was no sign of him anywhere, and we began to think that he had given us the slip.

"Then, while my inspector watched the barrier, I went down the train until I came to the compartment that I had seen him enter. And there he was, lying back in the off corner, apparently fast asleep. But he wasn't asleep. He was dead. I found this on the floor of the carriage."

"Ha!" exclaimed Thorndyke. "This fellow was well up in poisons, it seems! This tube contained twenty tabloids, a thirty-second of a grain altogether, so if he swallowed them all he took about twelve times the medical dose. Well, perhaps he has done the best thing, after all."

"The best thing for you, gentlemen," said Mr. Miller, "for there is no need to raise any questions in detail at the inquest; and publicity would be very unpleasant for Mr. Blackmore. It is a thousand pities that you or Dr. Jervis hadn't put us on the scent in time to prevent the crime—though, of course, we couldn't have entered the premises without a warrant. But it is easy to be wise after the event. Well, good-night, gentlemen; I suppose this accident disposes of your business as far as the will is concerned?"

"I suppose it does," said Mr. Winwood; "but I shall enter a caveat, all the same."

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN

31 NEW INN
(ORIGINAL MAGAZINE VERSION)

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE

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