

LIBRARY
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY


The Mystery of 31 New Inn


NOVELS BY

R. AUSTIN FREEMAN

THE D’ARBLAY MYSTERY
THE SHADOW OF THE WOLF
THE MYSTERY OF ANGELINA
FROOD
THE CAT'S EYE
JOHN THORNDYKE'S CASE
BOOK
HELEN VARDON'S CONFES-
SION
THE RED THUMB MARK
THE EYE OF OSIRIS
THE UNWILLING ADVEN-
TURER
THE MYSTERY OF 31 NEW
INN
THE SINGING BONE
THE GREAT PORTRAIT
MYSTERY
THE PUZZLE LOCK


HODDER AND STOUGI-ITON LTD.
PUBLISHERS Lennon, E.C.4


BY
R. AUSTIN FREEMAN
. Author of “ The Red Thumb Mark,” 0
° “ The Eye of Osiris," etc. . '
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HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
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M in Glut Britain- Buﬂek'l‘mna Ltd" Frome and London


TO
MY FRIEND
BERNARD E. BISHOP


Preface
OMMENTING upon one of my earlier novels,
in respect of which I had claimed to have
been careful to adhere to common probabilities and
to have made use only of really practicable methods
of investigation, a critic remarked that this was of
no consequence whatever, so long as the story was
amusing.
Few people, I imagine, will agree with him. To
most readers, and certainly to the kind of reader
for whom an author is willing to take trouble,
complete realism in respect of incidents and methods
is an essential factor in maintaining the interest
of a detective story. Hence it may be worth while
to mention that Thorndyke’s method of producing
the track chart, described in Chapters II and III,
has been actually used in practice. It is a modi-
ﬁcation of one devised by me many years ago when
I was crossing Ashanti to the city of Bontuku, the
whereabouts of which in the far interior was then
only vaguely known. My instructions were to ﬁx
the positions of all towns, villages, rivers and moun-
tains as accurately as possible ; but ﬁnding ordinary
methods of surveying impracticable in the dense
forest which covers the whole region, I adopted
7


8 Preface


this simple and apparently rude method, checking
the distances whenever possible by astronomical
observation.
The resulting route-map was surprisingly accu-
rate, as shown by the agreement of the outward
and homeward tracks. It was published by the
Royal Geographical Society, and incorporated in
the map of this region compiled by the Intelligence
Branch of the War Ofﬁce, and it formed the basis
of the map which accompanied my volume of Travels
in Ashanti and Jaman. So that Thorndyke’s plan
must be taken as quite a practicable one.
New Inn, the background of this story, and one
of the last surviving inns of Chancery, has recently
passed away after upwards of four centuries of new-
ness. Even now, however, a few of the old, dis-
mantled houses (including perhaps, the mysterious
31) may be seenvfrom the Strand peeping over the
iron roof of the skating rink which has displaced
the picturesque hall, the pension-room and the
garden. The postern gate, too, in Houghton Street
still remains, though the arch is bricked up inside.
Passing it lately, I made the rough sketch which
appears on next page, and which shows all that is
left of this pleasant old London backwater.
R. A. F.
GRAVESEND


C ontents

CHAP. PAGE
I THE MYSTERIOUS PATIENT . . . . I 3
II THORNDYKE DEVISES A SCHEME . . _ 41
III “ A CHIEL’s AMANG YE TAKIN’ NOTES " , ' 55
IV THE OFFICIAL VIEW . . . . . 30
V JEFFREY BLACKMORE’s WILL . . _ 90
VI JEFFREY BLACKMORE, DECEASED , _ “7
VII THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION . . , :25
VIII THE Tnacx CHART . . . . , 153
IX THE HOUSE 01* MYSTERY . . . . 166
X THE HUNTER HUNTED . . . . I87
XI THE BLACKMORE CASE REVIEWED . . 210
XII THE PORTRAIT . . . . . . 229
X111 THE STATEMENT or SAMUEL WILKINS . . 242
XIV THORNDYKE LAYS THE MINE . . . 261
XV THORNDYKE EXPLODES THE MINE . . 27o
XVI AN EXPOSITION AND A TRAGEDY . - 285
11


Chapter I The Mysterious Patient

S I look back through the years of my associa-
tion with John Thorndyke, I am able to recall
a wealth of adventures and strange experiences
such as falls to the lot of very few men who pass
their lives within hearing of Big Ben. Many of
these experiences I have already placed on record;
but it now occurs to me that I have hitherto left
unrecorded one that is, perhaps, the most astonish-
ing and incredible of the whole series ; an adventure,
too, that has for me the added interest that it
inaugurated my permanent association with my
learned and talented friend, and marked the close
of a rather unhappy and unprosperous period of
my life.
Memory, retracing the journey through the pass-
ing years to the starting-point of those strange
events, lands me in a shabby little ground-ﬂoor
room in a house near the Walworth end of Lower
Kennington Lane. A couple of framed diplomas
on the wall, a card of Snellen’s test-types and a
stethoscope lying on the writing-table, proclaim it
a doctor’s consulting—room; and my own position
in the round-backed chair at the said table, pro-
daims me the practitioner in charge.
13


14 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


It was nearly nine o’clock. The noisy little
clock on the mantelpiece announced the fact, and,
by its frantic ticking, seemed as anxious as I to get
the consultation hours over. I glanced wistfully
at my mud-splashed boots and wondered if I might
yet venture to assume the slippers that peeped
coyly from under the shabby sofa. I even allowed
my thoughts to wander to the pipe that reposed
in my coat pocket. Another minute and I could
turn down the surgery gas and shut the outer
door. The fussy little clock gave a sort of pre-
liminary cough or hiccup, as if it should say:
“ Aheml ladies and gentlemen, I am about to
strike.” And at that moment, the bottle-boy
opened the door and, thrusting in his head, uttered
the one word: “ Gentleman.”
Extreme economy of words is apt to result in
ambiguity. But I understood. In Kennington
Lane, the race of mere men and women appeared
to be extinct. They were all gentlemen—unless
they were ladies or children—even as the Liberian
army was said to consist entirely of generals.
Sweeps, labourers, milkmen, costermongers—all
were impartially invested by the democratic bottle-
boy with the rank and title of armigen'. The
present nobleman appeared to favour the aristo-
cratic recreation of driving a cab or job-master’s
carriage, and, as he entered the room, he touched
his hat, closed the door somewhat carefully, and
then, without remark, handed me a note which
bore the superscription “ Dr. Stillbury."
“ You understand,” I said, as I prepared to


The Mysterious Patient I 5


open the envelope, “ that I am not Dr. Stillbury.
He is away at present and I am looking after his
patients.”
“ It doesn’t signify,” the man replied. “ You’ll
do as we .”
On this, I opened the envelope and read the
note, which was quite brief, and, at ﬁrst sight, in
no way remarkable.
“ DEAR SIR,” it ran, “ Would you kindly come
and see a friend of mine who is staying with me?
The bearer of this will give you further particulars
and convey you to the house. Yours truly, H.
WEIss."
There was no address on the paper and no date,
and the writer was unknown to me.
“This note,” I said, “ refers to some further
particulars. What are they? ”
The messenger passed his hand over his hair with
a gesture of embarrassment. “ It’s a ridicklus
affair,” he said, with a contemptuous laugh. “ If
I had been Mr. Weiss, I wouldn’t have had nothing
to do with it. The sick gentleman, Mr. Graves,
is one of them people what can’t abear doctors.
He’s been ailing now for a week or two, but nothing
would induce him to see a doctor. Mr. Weiss did
everything he could to persuade him, but it was
no go. He wouldn’t. However, it seems Mr.
Weiss threatened to send for a medical man on
his own account, because, you see, he was getting
a bit nervous; and then Mr. Graves gave way.


16 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


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 Mr. Weiss promise to
keep to that condition before he’d let him send.
So Mr. Weiss promised, and, of course, he’s got to
keep his word."
“ But,” I said, with a smile, “ you’ve just told
me his name—if his name really is Graves.”
“ You can form your own opinion on that,” said
the coachman.
“ And,” I added, “ as to not being told where he
lives, I can see that for myself. I’m not blind, you
know.”
“ We’ll take the risk of what you see,” the man
replied. “ The question is, will you take the job
on ? ”
Yes; that was the question, and I considered it
for some time before replying. We medical men
are pretty familiar with the kind of person who
“ can’t abear doctors,“ and we like to have as little
to do with him as possible. He is a thankless and
unsatisfactory patient. Intercourse with him is
unpleasant, he gives a great deal of trouble and
responds badly to treatment. If this had been
my own practice, I should have declined the case
off-hand. But it was not my practice. I was only
a. deputy. I could not lightly refuse work which
would yield a proﬁt to my principal, unpleasant
though it might be.
As I turned the matter over in my mind, I half
unconsciously scrutinized my visitor—somewhat


‘ The Mysterious Patient I7


to his embarrassment—and I liked hisappearance
as little as I liked his mission. He kept his station
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 some-
what sly, unprepossessing face and a greasy, red
moustache that seemed out of character with his
rather perfunctory livery; though this was mere
prejudice. He wore a wig, too—not that there was
anything discreditable in that—and the thumb-nail
of the hand that held his hat bore disﬁguring traces
of some injury—which, again, though unsightly,
in no wise reﬂected on his moral character. Lastly,
he watched me keenly with a mixture of anxiety and
sly complacency that I found distinctly unpleasant.
In a general way, he impressed me disagreeably.
I did not like the look of him at all; but never-
theless I decided to undertake the case.
“ I suppose,” I answered, at length, “it is no
affair of mine who the patient is or where he lives.
But how do you propose to manage the business?
Am I to be led to the house blindfolded, like the
visitor to the bandit’s cave? ”
The man grinned slightly and looked very de-
cidedly relieved.
“No, sir,” he answered; “we ain’t going to
blindfold you. I’ve got a carriage outside. I don’t
think you’ll see much out of that.”
"Q “ Very well,” I rejoined, opening the door to
let him out, “ I’ll be with you in a minute. I
suppose you can’t give me any idea as to what is
the matter with the patient? ”


18 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ No, sir, I can’t,” he replied; and he went out
to see to the carriage.
I slipped into a bag an assortment of emergency
drugs and a few diagnostic instruments, turned .
down the gas and passed out through the surgery.
The carriage was standing at the kerb, guarded by
the coachman and watched with deep interest by
the bottle-boy. I viewed it with mingled curiosity
and disfavour. It was a kind of large brougham,
such as is used by some commercial travellers,
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 with a railway key.
As I emerged from the house, the coachman
unlocked the door and held it open.
“ How long will the journey take? ” I asked,
pausing with my foot on the step.
The coachman considered a moment or two and
replied:
“ It took me, I should say, nigh upon half an
hour to get here.”
This was pleasant hearing. A half an hour each
way and a half an hour at the patient’s house. At
that rate it would be half-past ten before I was
home again, and then it was quite probable that I
should ﬁnd some other untimely messenger waiting
on the doorstep. With a muttered anathema on
the unknown Mr. Graves and the unrestful life of
a locum tenens, I stepped into the uninviting
vehicle. c Instantly the coachman slammed the door
and turned the key, leaving me in total darkness.


T he Mysterious Patient 19


One comfort was left to me ; my pipe was in my
pocket. I made shift to load it in the dark, and,
having lit it with a wax match, took the opportunity
to inspect the interior of my prison. It was a shabby
affair. The moth—eaten state of the blue cloth
cushions seemed to suggest that it had been long
out of regular use; the oil-cloth ﬂoor-covering
was worn into holes; ordinary internal ﬁttings
there were none. But the appearances suggested
that the crazy vehicle had been prepared with
considerable forethought for its present use. The '
inside handles of the doors had apparently been
removed; the wooden shutters were permanently
ﬁxed in their places; and a paper label, stuck on
the transom below each window, had a suspicious
appearance of having been put there to cover the
painted name and address of the job-master or livery-
stable keeper who had originally owned the carriage.
These observations gave me abundant food for
reﬂection. This Mr. Weiss must be an excessively
conscientious man if he had considered that his
promise to Mr. Graves committed him to such
extraordinary precautions. Evidently no mere
following of the letter of the law was enough to
satisfy his sensitive conscience. Unless he had
reasons for sharing Mr. Graves’s unreasonable
desire for secrecy—for one could not suppose that
these measures of concealment had been taken by
the patient himself.
The further suggestions that evolved themselves
from this consideration were a little disquieting.
Whither was I being carried and for what purpose ?


20 The Mystery of 3r, New Inn


The idea that I was bound for some den of thieves
where I might be robbed and possibly murdered,
I dismissed with a smile. Thieves do not make
elaborately concerted plans to rob poor devils
like me. Poverty has its compensations in that
respect. But there were other possibilities. Imag-
ination backed by experience had no difﬁculty in
conjuring up a number of situations in which a
medical man might be called upon, with or without
coercion, either to witness or actively to partici-
pate in the commission of some unlawful act.
Reﬂections of this kind occupied me pretty
actively if not very agreeably during this strange
journey. And the monotony was relieved, too,
by other distractions. I was, for example, greatly
interested to notice how, when one sense is in
abeyance, the other senses rouse into a compensat-
ing intensity of perception. I sat smoking my pipe
in darkness which was absolute save for the dim
glow from the smouldering tobacco in the bowl,
and seemed to be cut off from all knowledge of the
world without. But yet I was not. The vibrations
of the carriage, with its hard springs and iron-
tired wheels, registered accurately and plainly the
character of the roadway. The harsh‘ rattle of
granite setts, the soft bumpiness of macadam, the
smooth rumble of wood-pavement, the jarring and
swerving of crossed tram-lines; all were easily
recognizable and together sketched the general
features of the neighbourhood through which I
was passing. And the sense of hearing ﬁlled in the
details. Now the hoot of a tug’s whistle told of


The Mysterious Patient 2!


proximity to the river. A sudden and brief hollow
reverberation announced the passage under a rail-
way a-rch (which, by the way, happened several
times during the journey) ; and, when I heard the
familiar whistle of a railway-guard followed by
the quick snorts of a skidding locomotive, I had as
clear a picture of a heavy passenger-train moving
out of a station as if I had seen it in broad daylight.
I had just ﬁnished my pipe and knocked out the
ashes 0n the heel of my boot, when the carriage
slowed down and entered a covered way—as I
could tell by the hollow echoes. Then I distin-
guished the clang of heavy wooden gates closed
behind me, and a moment or two later the carriage
door was unlocked and opened. I stepped out
blinking into a covered passage paved with cobbles
and apparently leading down to a mews; but it
was all in darkness, and I had no time to make any
detailed observations, as the carriage had drawn
up opposite a side door which was open and in
which stood a woman holding a lighted candle.
“ Is that the doctor P ” she asked, speaking with
a rather pronounced German accent and shading
the candle with her hand as she peered at me.
I answered in the afﬁrmative, and she then
exclaimed:
“ I am glad you have come. Mr. Weiss will be
so relieved. Come in, please.”
I followed her across a dark passage into a dark
room, where she set the candle down on a chest of
drawers and turned to depart. At the door, how-
ever, she paused and looked back.


22 The .Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ It is not a very nice room to ask you into,” she
said. " We are very untidy just now, but you
must excuse us. We have had so much anxiety
about poor Mr. Graves.”
“ He has been ill some time, then? "
“ Yes. Some little time. At intervals, you know.
Sometimes better, sometimes not so well."
As she spoke, she gradually backed out into the
passage but did not go away at once. I accordingly
pursued my inquiries.
“ He has not been seen by any doctor, has he ? ”
“ No,” she answered, “ he has always refused to
see a doctor. That has been a great trouble to
us. Mr. Weiss has been very anxious about him.
He will be so glad to hear that you have come.
I had better go and tell him. Perhaps you will
kindly sit down until he is able to come to you,"
and with this she departed on her mission.
It struck me as a little odd that, considering his
anxiety and the apparent urgency of the case, Mr.
Weiss should not have been waiting to receive me.
And when several minutes elapsed without his
appearing, the oddness of the circumstance im-
pressed me still more. Having no desire, after the
journey in the carriage, to sit down, I whiled away
the time by an inspection of the room. And a very
curious room it was; bare, dirty, neglected and,
apparently, unused. A faded carpet had been
ﬂung untidily on the ﬂoor. A small, shabby table
stood in the middle of the room ; and beyond this,
three horsehair-covered chairs and a chest of
drawers formed the entire set of furniture. No


The Mysterious Patient 23


pictures hung on the mouldy walls, no curtains
covered the shuttered windows, and the dark
drapery of cobwebs that hung from the ceiling to
commemorate a long and illustrious dynasty of
spiders hinted at months of neglect and disuse.
The chest of drawers—an incongruous article of
furniture for what seemed to be a dining-room—as
being the nearest and best lighted object received
most of my attention. It was a ﬁne old chest of
nearly black mahogany, very battered and in the
last stage of decay, but originally a piece of some
pretensions. Regretful of its fallen estate, I looked
it over with some interest and had just observed
on its lower corner a little label bearing the printed
inscription “ Lot 201 ” when I heard footsteps
descending the stairs. A moment later the door
opened and a shadowy ﬁgure appeared standing
close by the threshold.
“ Good evening, doctor,’ said the stranger, in a
deep, quiet voice and with a distinct, though not
strong, German accent. “ I must apologize for keep-
ing you waiting.”
I acknowledged the apology somewhat stiﬂly and
asked: “ You are Mr. Weiss, I presume? ”
“ Yes, I am Mr. Weiss. It is very good of you
to come so far and so late at night and to make 'no
objection to the absurd conditions that my poor
friend has imposed.”
“ Not at all,” I replied. “ It is my business to
go when and where I am wanted, and it is not my
business to inquire into the private affairs of my
patients.”
I


24. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ That is very true, sir,” he agreed cordially,
“ and I am much obliged to you for taking that
very proper view of the case. I pointed that out
to my friend, but he is not a very reasonable man.
He is very secretive and rather suspicious by nature. ”
“ So I inferred. And as to his condition; is he
seriously ill? ”
“ Ah,” said Mr. Weiss, “ that is what I want you
to tell me. I am very much puzzled about him.”
“ But what is the nature of his illness? What
does he complain of? "
“ 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 strange and by no
means in agreement with the patient’s energetic
refusal to see a doctor.
“ But," I asked,. “ does he never rouse com-
pletely ? ”
“ Oh, yes,” Mr. Weiss answered quickly ;' “ he
rouses from time to time and is then quite rational,
and, as you may have gathered, rather obstinate.
That is the peculiar and puzzling feature in the
case; this alternation between a state of stupor
and an almost normal and healthy condition. But
perhaps you had better see him and judge for
yourself. He had a rather severe attack just now.
Follow me, please. The stairs are rather dark.”
The stairs were very dark, and I noticed that
they were without any covering of carpet, or even
oil-cloth, so that our footsteps resounded dismally


The Mysterious Patient 2;


as if 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 ﬁgurein the bed, leaving the rest of the
room in a dim twilight.
As Mr. Weiss tiptoed into the chamber, a woman
—the one who had spoken to me below—rose from
a chair by the bedside and quietly left the room
by a second door. My conductor halted, and look—
ing ﬁxedly at the ﬁgure in the bed, called out:
“ Philip! Philip! Here is the doctor come to
see you.”
He paused for a moment or two, and, receiving
no answer, said : “ He seems to be dozing as usual.
Will you go and see what you can make of him ? ”
I stepped forward to the bedside, leaving Mr.
Weiss at the end of the room near the door by
which we had entered, where he remained, slowly
and noiselessly pacing backwards and forwards in
the semi-obscurity. By the light of the candle
I saw an elderly man with good features and a
reﬁned, intelligent and even attractive face, but
dreadfully emaciated, bloodless and sallow. He
lay quite motionless except for the scarcely per-
ceptible rise and fall of his chest; his eyes were
nearly closed, his features relaxed, and, though
he was not actually asleep, he seemed to be in a
dreamy, somnolent, lethargic state, as if under the
inﬂuence of some narcotic.


26 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


I watched him for a minute or so, timing his
slow breathing by my watch, and then suddenly
and sharply, addressed him 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 make a physical examination.
First, I felt his pulse, grasping his wrist with in-
tentional brusqueness in the hope of rousing him
from his stupor. The beats were slow, feeble and
slightly irregular, giving clear evidence, if any
were needed, of his generally lowered vitality. I
listened carefully to his heart, the sounds of which
were very distinct through the thin walls of his
emaciated chest, but found nothing abnormal
beyond the feebleness and uncertainty of its action.
Then I turned my attention to his eyes, which I
examined closely with the aid of the candle and my
ophthalmoscope lens, raising the lids somewhat
roughly so as to expose the whole of the irides. He
submitted without resistance to my rather un-
gentle handling of these sensitive structures, and
showed no signs of discomfort even when I brought
the candle—ﬂame to within a couple of inches of
his eyes.
But this extraordinary tolerance of light was
easily explained by closer examination; for the
pupils were contracted to such an extreme degree
that only the very minutest point of black was
visible at the centre of the grey in's. Nor was this
the only abnormal peculiarity of the sick man’s
eyes. As he lay on his back, the right iris sagged


The Mysterious Patient 27


down slightly towards its centre, showing a dis-
tinctly concave surface; and, when I contrived
to produce a slight but quick movement of the
eyeball, a perceptible undulatory movement could
be detected. 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 ex-
tracted for the cure of cataract, or where it has
become accidentally displaced, leaving the iris un-
supported. 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 my lens, to ﬁnd any trace 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, and
by marks which I looked for and found behind the
ears, corresponding to the hooks or “ curl sides ”
of the glasses. For those spectacles which are
ﬁtted with curl sides to hook over the ears are
usually intended to be worn habitually, and this
agreed with the indentation on the nose; which
was deeper than would have been accounted for
by the merely occasional use of spectacles for
reading. But if only one eye was useful, a single
eye-glass would have answered the purpose; not


28 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


that there was any weight in this objection, for a
single eye-glass worn constantly would be much
less convenient than a pair of hook-sided spectacles.
As to the nature of the patient’s illness, only one
opinion seemed possible. It was a clear and typical
case of opium or morphine poisoning. To this
conclusion all his symptoms seemed to point with
absolute certainty. The 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 hardly be roused by
the roughest handling and which yet did not amount
to actual insensibility; all 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.
But this conclusion in its turn raised a very
awkward and difﬁcult question. If a large—a
poisonous—dose of the drug had been taken, how,
and by whom had that dose been administered?
The closest scrutiny of the patient’s arms and legs
failed to reveal a single mark such as would be
made by a hypodermic needle. This man was
clearly no common morphinomaniac; and in the
absence of the usual sprinkling of needlemarks,
there was nothing to show or suggest whether the
drug had been taken voluntarily by the patient
himself or administered by someone else.
And then there remained the possibility that I
might, after all, be mistaken in my diagnosis. I
felt pretty conﬁdent. But the wise man always


The Mysterious Patient 29


holds a doubt in reserve. And, in the present case,
having regard to the obviously serious condition
of the patient, such a doubt was eminently disturb-
ing. Indeed, as I pocketed my stethoscope and
took a last look at the motionless, silent ﬁgure, I
realized that my position was one of extraordinary
difﬁculty and perplexity. On the one hand my
suspicions—aroused, naturally enough, by the very
unusual circumstances that surrounded my visit—-
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.
As I turned away from the bed Mr. Weiss stopped
his slow pacing to and fro and faced me. The
feeble light of the candle now fell on him, and I
saw him distinctly for the ﬁrst time. He did not
impress me favourably. He was a thick-set, round-
shouldered man, a typical fair German with tow-
coloured hair, greased and brushed down smoothly,
a large, ragged, sandy beard and coarse, sketchy
features. His nose was large and thick with a
bulbous end, and inclined to a reddish purple, a
tint which extended to the adjacent parts of his face
as if the colour had run. His eyebrows were large
and beetling, overhanging deep-set eyes, and he wore
a pair of spectacles which gave him a somewhat
owlish expression. His exterior was unprepossessing,
and I was in a state of mind that rendered me easily
receptive of an unfavourable impression.
“ Well,” he said, “ what do you make of him? ”
I hesitated, still perplexed by the conﬂicting


30 The Mystery of 31, New Inn

necessities of caution and frankness, but at length
replied :
“ I think rather badly of him, Mr. Weiss. He is
in a very low state."
“ Yes, I can see that. But have you come to any
decision as t6 the nature of his illness ? ”
There was a tone of anxiety and suppresSed eager-
ness in the question which, while it was natural
enough in the circumstances, by no means allayed
my suspicions, but rather inﬂuenced me on the side
of caution.
“ I cannot give a very deﬁnite opinion at present,”
I replied guardedly. “ The symptoms are rather
obscure and might very well indicate several different
conditions. They might be due to congestion of the
brain, and, if no other explanation were possible, I
should incline to that view. The alternative is some
narcotic poison, such as opium or morphia.”
“ But that is quite impossible. There is no such
drug in the house, and as he never leaves his room
now, he could not get any from outside.”
“ What about the servants ? ” I asked.
“ There are no servants excepting my house-
keeper, and she is absolutely trustworthy.”
“ He might have some store of the drug that you
are not aware of. Is he left alone much ? “
“ Very seldom indeed. I spend as much time with
him as I can, and when I am not able to be in the
room, Mrs Schallibaum, my housekeeper, sits with
him."
" Is he often as drowsy as he is now? ”
“ Oh, very often ; in fact, I should say that is his


The Mysterious Patient 3!
‘f'
l “ The recovery is rather comparative.
‘ and fairly natural in his manner, but he is still dull
.and lethargic.
_ .radictory statements.

usual condition. He rouses up now and again, and
then he is quite lucid and natural for, perhaps, an
hour or so ; but presently he becomes drowsy again
and doses off, and remains asleep, or half asleep, for
hours on end. Do you know of any disease that
takes people in that way? ”
“ No,” I answered. “ The symptoms are not
exactly like those of any disease that is known to
me. But they are much very like those of opium
poisoning.”
“ But, my dear sir,” Mr. Weiss retorted im-
patiently, “ since it is clearly impossible that it
can be opium poisoning, it must be something else.
Now, what else can it be? You were speaking of
congestion of the brain.”
“Yes. But the objection to that is the very
complete recovery that seems to take place in the
intervals.”
“ I would not say very complete,” said Mr. Weiss.
He is lucid
He does not, for instance, show any
.lesire to go out, or even to leave his room."
I pondered uncomfortably on these rather con-
Clearly Mr. Weiss did not
lean to entertain the theory of opium poisoning;
which was natural enough if he had no knowledge
hf the drug having been used. But still-—
I.
“ I suppose,” said Mr Weiss, “ you have
experience of sleeping sickness? "
The suggestion startled me. I had not. Very few
people had. At that time practically nothing was


32 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


known about the disease. It was a mere patho-
logical curiosity, almost unheard of excepting by a
few practitioners in remote parts of Africa, and hardly
referred to in the text-books. Its connection with the
trypanosome-bearing insects was as yet unsuspected,
and, to me, its symptoms were absolutely unknown.
“ No, I have not,” I replied. “ The disease is
nothing more than a name to me. But why do you
ask? Has Mr. Graves been abroad ? ”
“ Yes. He has been travelling for the last three
or four years, and I know that he spent some time
recently in West Africa, where this disease occurs.
In fact, it was from him that I ﬁrst heard about it.”
This was a new fact. It shook my conﬁdence in
my diagnosis very c'onsiderably, and inclined me to
reconsider my suspicions. If Mr. Weiss was lying to
me, he now had me at a decided disadvantage.
“ What do you think ? ” he asked. “ Is it
possible that this can be sleeping sickness? ”
“ I should not like to say that it is impossible,”
I replied. “ The disease is practically unknown to
me. I have never practised out of England and have
had no occasion to study it. Until I have looked
the subject up, I should not be in a position to give
an opinion. Of course, if I could see Mr. Graves in
one of what we may call his ‘lucid intervals ’ I
should be able to form a better idea. Do you think
that could be managed?”
“ It might. I see the importance of it and will
certainly ‘do my best ; but he is a difﬁcult man ; a
very difﬁcult man. I sincerely hope it is not sleeping
sickness.”


The Mysterious Patient \ 33

“ Why P ’L
“ Because—as I understood from him—that
disease is invariably fatal, sooner or later. There
seem to be no cure. Do you think you will be able
to decide when you see him again P ”
“ I hope so,” I replied. “ I shall look up the
authorities and see exactly what the symptoms are
——that is, so far as they are known ; but my impres-
sion is that there is very little information
available ”
“ And in the meantime? ”
“ We will give him some medicine and attend to
his general condition, and you had better let me see
him again as soon as possible.” I was about to say
that the effect of the medicine itself might throw
some light on the patient’s condition, but, as 1
proposed to treat him for morphine poisoning, I
thought it wiser to keep this item of information to
myself. Accordingly, I conﬁned myself to a few
general directions as to the care of the patient, to
which Mr. Weiss listened attentively. “ And,” I
concluded, “ we must not lose sight of the opium
question. You had better search the room carefully
and keep a close watch on the patient, especially
during his intervals of wakefulness.”
“ Very well, doctor,” Mr. Weiss replied, “ I will
do all that you tell me and I will send for you again
as soon as possible, if you do not object to poor
Graves’s ridiculous conditions. And now, if you
will allow me to pay your fee, I will go and order the
carriage while you are writing the prescription.”
“ There is no need for a prescription,” I said.

2


34. The Mystery of 31, New Inn I


“ I will make up some medicine and give it to the
coachman.”
Mr. Weiss seemed inclined to demur to this
arrangement, but I had my own reasons for insisting
on it. Modern prescriptions are not difﬁcult to
read, and I did not wish Mr. Weiss to know what
treatment the patient was having.
As soon as I was left alone, I returned to the
bedside and once more looked down at the impassive
ﬁgure. And as I looked, my suspicions revived. It
was very like morphine poisoning; and, if it was
morphine, it was no common, medicinal dose that had
been given. I opened my bag and took out my
hypodermic case from which I extracted a little tube
of atropine tabloids. Shaking out into my hand a
couple of the tiny discs, I drew down the patient's
under-lip and slipped the little tablets under his
tongue. Then I quickly replaced the tube and
dropped the case into my bag; and I had hardly
done so when the door opened softly and the house-
keeper entered the room.
“ How do you ﬁnd Mr. Graves? ” she asked in
what I thought a very unnecessarily low tone, con-
sidering the patient’s lethargic state.
“ He seems to be very ill,” I answered.
“ So ! ” she rejoined, and added : “ I am sorry to
hear that. We have been anxious about him.”
)She seated herself on the chair by the bedside,
and, shading the candle from the patient’s face—
and her own, too—produced from a bag that hung
from her waist a half-ﬁnished stocking and began to
knit silently and with the skill characteristic of the


The Mysterious Patient 3 5

German housewife. I looked at her attentively
(though she was so much in the shadow that I could
see her but indistinctly) and somehow her appear-
ance prepossessed me as little as did that of the
other members of the household. Yet she was not
an ill-looking woman. She had an excellent ﬁgure,
and the air of a person of good social position ; ‘ her
features were good enough and her colouring, although
a little unusual, was not unpleasant. Like Mr.
Weiss, she had very fair hair, greased, parted in the
middle and brushed down as smoothly as the painted
hair of a Dutch doll. She appeared to have no
eyebrows at all—owing, no doubt, to the light colour
of the hair—and the doll-like character was empha-
sized by her eyes, which were either brown or
dark grey, I could not see which. A further
peculiarity consisted in a “ habit spasm,” such as
one often sees in nervous children; a periodical
quick jerk of the head, as if a cap-string or dangling
lock were being shaken off the cheek. Her age I
judged to be about thirty-ﬁve.
The carriage, which one might have expected to
be waiting, seemed to take some time in getting
ready. I sat, with growing impatience, listening
to the sick man's soft breathing and the click of
the housekeeper’s knitting-needles. I wanted to
get home, not only for my own sake ; the patient’s
condition made it highly desirable that the reme-
dies should be given as quickly as possible. But
the minutes dragged on, and I was on the point
of expostulating when a bell rang on the
landing.


36 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ The carriage is ready,” said Mrs. Schallibaum.
" Let me light you down the stairs.”
She rose, and, taking the candle, preceded me
to the head of the stairs, where she stood holding
the light over the baluster-rail as I descended and
crossed the passage to the open side door. The
carriage was drawn up in the covered way as I
could see by the faint glimmer of the distant candle ;
which also enabled me dimly to discern the coachman
standing close by in the shadow. I looked round,
rather expecting to see Mr. Weiss, but, as he made
no appearance, I entered the carriage. The door
was immediately banged to and locked, and I then
heard the heavy bolts of the gates withdrawn and
the loud creaking of hinges. The carriage moved
out slowly and stopped; the gates slammed to
behind me ; I felt the lurch as the coachman climbed
to his seat and we started forward.
My reﬂections during the return journey were the
reverse of agreeable. I could not rid myself of the
conviction that I was being involved in some very
suspicious proceedings. It was possible, of course,
that this feeling was due to the strange secrecy that
surrounded my connection with this case ; that, had
I made my visit under ordinary conditions, I might
have found in the patient’s symptoms nothing to
excite suspicion or alarm. It might be so, but that
consideration did not comfort me.
Then, my diagnosis might be wrong. It might
be that this was, in reality, a case of some brain
affection accompanied by compression, such as slow
haemorrhage, abscess, tumour or simple congestion.


The Mysterious Patient 37


These cases were very difficult at times. But the
appearances in this one did not consistently agree
with the symptoms accompanying any of these
conditions. As to sleeping sickness, it was, perhaps
a more hopeful suggestion, but I could not decide
for or against it until I had more knowledge ; and
against this view was the weighty fact that the
symptoms did exactly agree with the theory of
morphine poisoning.
But even so, there was no conclusive evidence of
any criminal act. The patient might be a conﬁrmed
opium-eater, and the symptoms heightened by
deliberate deception. The cunning of these unfor-
tunates is proverbial and is only equalled by their
secretiveness and mendacity. It would be quite
possible for this man 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. This would be
quite in character with his objection to seeing a
doctor and his desire for secrecy. But still, I did not
believe it to be the true explanation. In spite of all
the various alternative possibilities, my suspicions
came back to Mr. Weiss and the strange, taciturn
woman, and refused to budge.
For all the circumstances of the case were sus-
picious. The elaborate preparations implied by the
state of the carriage in which I was travelling ; the
make-shift appearance of the house ; the absence of
ordinary domestic servants, although a coachman
was kept ; the evident desire of Mr. Weiss and the
woman to avoid thorough inspection of their persons;


38 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


and, above all, the fact that the former 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 state-
ment as to the patient's wilfulness and obstinacy
and even more irreconcilable with the deep and
comparatively fresh marks of the spectacles on the
patient’s nose. That 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 interrupted by the stopping
of the caniage. The door was unlocked and thrown
open, and I emerged from my dark and stuffy
prison opposite my own house.
“ I will let you have the medicine in a minute or
two,” I said to the coachman ; and, as I let myself
in with my latch-key, my mind came back swiftly
from the general circumstances of the case to the
very critical condition of the patient. Already I
was regretting that I had not taken more energetic
measures to rouse him and restore his ﬂagging
vitality ; for it would be a terrible thing if he should
take a turn for the worse and die before the coach-
man returned with the remedies. Spurred on by
this alarming thought, I made up the medicines
quickly and carried the hastily wrapped bottles out to
the man, whom I found standing by the horse’s head.
.“ Get back as quickly as you can,” I said, “ and
tell Mr. Weiss to lose no time in giving the patient
the draught in the small bottle. The directions are
on the labels.”


The Mysterious Patient 39


The coachman took the packages from me without
reply, climbed to his seat, touched the horse with
his whip and drove off at a rapid pace towards
Newington Butts.
The little clock in the consulting-room showed
that it was close on eleven; time for a tired GP.
to be thinking of bed. But I was not sleepy.
Over my frugal supper I found myself taking up
anew the thread of my meditations, and afterwards,
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.
I looked up Stillbury’s little reference library for
information on the subject of sleeping sickness,
but learned no more than that it was “ a rare and
obscure disease of which very little was known at
present.” I read up morphine poisoning and was
only further conﬁrmed in the belief that my diagnosis
was correct; which would have been more satis-
factory if the circumstances had been different.
For the interest of the case was not merely
academic. I was in a position of great difﬁculty
and responsibility and had to decide on a course of
action. What ought I to do? Should I maintain
the professional secrecy to which I was tacitly com-
mitted, or ought I to convey a hint to the police ?
Suddenly, and with a singular feeling of relief,
I bethought myself of my old friend and fellow-
student, John Thomdyke, now an eminent
authority on Medical Jurisprudence. I had been
associated with him temporarily in one case as his
assistant, and had then been deeply impressed


40 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


by his versatile learning, his acuteness and his
marvellous resourcefulness. Thorndyke was a
barrister in extensive practice, 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 practice. If I could ﬁnd time to call at
the Temple and lay 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, even allowing for one or
two extra calls in the morning, but yet 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, more-
over, 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 very good chance of
catching him on his return from the hospital. I
could allow myself time for quite a long chat with
him, and, by taking a hansom, still get back in good
time for the evening’s work.
# This was a great comfort. At the prospect of
sharing my responsibilities with a friend on whose
judgment I could so entirely rely, my embarrass-
ments seemed to drop from me in a moment. Having
entered the engagement in my visiting-list, I rose, in
greatly improved spirits, and knocked out my pipe


Thorndyke Devises a Scheme 41


just as the little clock banged out impatiently the
hour of midnight.
Chapter II Thorndyke Devises a Scheme
S I entered the Temple by the Tudor Street
gate the aspect of the place smote my senses
with an air of agreeable familiarity. Here had I
spent many a delightful hour when working with
Thorndyke at the remarkable Hornby case, which
the newspapers had called “ The Case of the Red
Thumb Mark ” ; and here had I met the romance
of my life, the story whereof is told elsewhere.
The place was thus endeared to me by pleasant
recollections of a happy past, and its associations
suggested hopes of happiness yet to come and in
the not too far distant future.
My brisk tattoo on the little brass knocker brought
to the door no less a person than Thorndyke himself ;
and the warmth of his greeting made me at once
proud and ashamed. For I had not only been an
absentee ; I had been a very poor correspondent.
“ The prodigal has returned, Polton,” he ex-
claimed, looking into the room. “ Here is Dr. Jervis.”
I followed him into the room and found Polton
-—-his conﬁdential servant, laboratory assistant,
artiﬁcer and general “familiar "—setting out the
tea-tray on a small table. The little man shook
hands cordially with me, and his face crinkled up
into the sort of smile that one might expect to see
on a benevolent walnut.


Thorndyke De'vises a Scheme I 43


you not engaged to be married and to a most chann-
ing girl? ”
“ Yes, I know. I have been a fool. But I will
really amend my ways. If necessary, I will pocket
my pride and let Juliet advance the money to buy
a practice.”
“ That,” said Thomdyke, “ is a very proper
resolution. Pride and reserve between people who
are going to be husband and wife, is an absurdity.
But why buy a practice? Have you forgotten my
proposal ? ”
“ I should be an ungrateful brute if I had.”
" Very well. I repeat it now. Come to me as
my junior, read for the Bar and work‘with me,
and, with your abilities, you will have a chance of
something like a career. I want you, Jervis,” he
added, earnestly. “ I must have a junior, with
my increasing practice, and you are the junior I
want. We are old and tried friends; we have
worked together; we like and trust one another,
and you are the best man for the job that I know.
Come; I am not going to take a refusal. This is
an ultimatum."
“ And what is the alternative? ” I asked with a
smile at his eagerness.
“ There isn’t any. You are going to say
yes."
_“ I believe I am,” I answered, not without
emotion; “ and I am more rejoiced at your offer
and more grateful than I can tell you. But we
must leave the ﬁnal arrangements for our next
meeting—in a week or so, I hope—for I have to


4.4. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


be back in an hour, and I want to consult you on
a matter of some importance.”
“ Very well,” said Thomdyke; “ we will leave
the formal agreement for consideration at our next
meeting. What is it that you want my opinion
on? ”
“ The fact is," I said, “ I am in a rather awkward
dilemma, and I want you to tell me what you think
I' ought to do.”
Thomdyke paused in the act of reﬁlling my cup
and glanced at me with unmistakable anxiety.
“ Nothing of an unpleasant nature, I hope,”
said he.
“ No, no ; nothing of that kind,” I answered with
a smile as I interpreted the euphemism ; for “ some-
thing unpleasant,” in the case of a young and
reasonably presentable medical man is ordinarily
the equivalent of trouble with the female of
his species. “ It is nothing that concerns me
personally at all," I continued; “ it is a question
of professional responsibility. But I had better
give you an account of the affair in a complete
narrative, as I know that you like to have your
data in a regular and consecutive order.”
Thereupon I proceeded to relate the history of
my visit to the mysterious Mr. Graves, not omit-
ting any single circumstance or detail that I could
recollect.
Thomdyke listened from the very beginning of
my story with the closest attention. His face was
the most impassive that I have ever seen ; ordinarily
as inscrutable as a bronze mask; but to me, who


4.6 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


case, and the extant descriptions are inadequate.
From what I know of the disease, its symptoms
agree with those in your case in respect of the
alleged moroseness and in the gradually increasing
periods of lethargy alternating with periods of
apparent recovery. On the other hand, the
disease is said to be conﬁned to negroes; but that
probably means only that negroes alone have
hitherto been exposed to the conditions that pro-
duce it. A more important fact is that, as far as
I know, extreme contraction of the pupils is not
a symptom of sleeping sickness. To sum up, the
probabilities are against sleeping sickness, but
with our insufﬁcient knowledge, we cannot deﬁnitely
exclude it.”
“ You think that it may really be sleeping
sickness? ”
“ No; personally I do not entertain that theory
for a moment. But I am considering the evidence
apart from our opinions on the subject. We have
to accept it as a conceivable hypothesis that
it may be sleeping sickness because we cannot
positively prove that it is not. That is all. But
when we come to the hypothesis of morphine
poisoning, the case is different. The symptoms
agree with those of morphine poisoning in every
respect. There is_ no exception or disagreement
whatever. The common sense of the matter is
therefore that we adopt morphine poisoning as
our working diagnosis; which is what you seem
to have done.”
“ Yes. For purposes of treatment.”


Thorndyke De'vises a Scheme I 47


“ Exactly. For medical purposes you adopted
the more probable view and dismissed the less
probable. That was the reasonable thing to do.
But for legal purposes you must entertain both
possibilities; for the hypothesis of poisoning
involves serious legal issues, whereas the hypothesis
of disease involves no legal issues at all.”
“ That doesn’t sound very helpful,” I remarked.
“ It indicates the necessity for caution,” he
retorted.
“ Yes, I see that. But what is your own opinion
of the case? ”
“ Well,” he said, “ let us consider the facts in
order. Here is a man who, we assume, is under
the inﬂuence of a poisonous dose of morphine.
The question is, did he take that dose himself or
was it administered to him by some other person?
If he took it himself, with what object did he take
it? The history that was given to you seems
completely to exclude the idea of suicide. But
the patient’s condition seems equally to exclude
the idea of morphinomania. Your opium-eater
does not reduce himself to a state of coma. He
usually keeps well within the limits of the tolerance
that has been established. The conclusion that
emerges is, I think, that the drug was administered
by some other person; and the most likely person
seems to be Mr. Weiss.”
I “ Isn’t morphine a very unusual poison? ”
“ Very ; and most inconvenient except in a single,
fatal dose, by reason of the rapidity with which
tolerance of the drug is established. But we must


48 The Myster of 31, New Inn


not forget that slow morphine poisoning might be
eminently suitable in certain cases. The manner
in which it enfeebles the will, confuses the judg-
ment and debilitates the body might make it very
useful to a poisoner whose aim was to get some
instrument or document executed, such as a will,
deed or assignment. And death could be produced
afterwards by other means. You see the important
bearing of this? ”
“ You mean in respect of a death certiﬁcate? ”
“ Yes. Suppose Mr. Weiss to have given a large
dose of morphine. He then sends for you and throws
out a suggestion of sleeping sickness. If you accept
the suggestion he is pretty safe. He can repeat the
process until he kills his victim and then get a
certiﬁcate from you which will cover the murder.
It was quite an ingenious scheme—which, by the
way, is characteristic of intricate crimes; your
subtle criminal often plans his crime like a genius,
but he generally executes it like a fool—as this man
seems to have done, if we are not doing him an
injustice.”
“ How has he acted like a. fool? ”
‘ " In several respects. In the ﬁrst place, he should
have chosen his doctor. A good, brisk, conﬁdent
man who ‘ knows his own mind ’ is the sort of person
who would have suited him ; a man who would have
jumped at a diagnosis and stuck to it; or else an
ignorant weakling of alcoholic tendencies. It was
shockingly bad luck to run against a cautious
scientiﬁc practitioner like my learned friend. Then,
of course, all this secrecy was sheer tomfoolery,


Thorndyke De'vises a Scheme 49


exactly calculated to put a careful man on his guard ;
as it has actually done. If Mr. Weiss is really a
criminal, he has mismanaged his affairs badly."
“ And you apparently think that he is a
criminal ? ”
“ I suspect him deeply. But I should like to ask
you one or two questions about him. You say he
spoke with a German accent. What command of
English had he ? Was his vocabulary good? Did
he use any German idioms? ”
“ No. I should say that his English was perfect,
and I noticed that his phrases were quite well chosen
even for an Englishman.”
“ Did he seem to you ‘ made up ’ in any way;
disguised, I mean? ”
“ I couldn’t say. The light was so very feeble.”
" You couldn’t see the colour of his eyes, for
instance? ”
“ No. I think they were grey, but I couldn’t be
sure.”
“ And as to the coachman. He wore a wig, you
said. Could you see the colour of his eyes? Or
any peculiarity by which you could recognize him ? ”
“ He had a malformed thumb-nail on his right
hand. That is all I can say about him.”
“ He didn’t strike you as resembling Weiss in any
way; in voice or features? ”
“ Not at all ; and he spoke, as I told you, with a
distinct Scotch accent.”
“ The reason I ask is that if Weiss is attempting
to poison this man, the coachman is almost certain
to be a confederate and might be a relative. You


50 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


had better examine him closely if you get another
chance.”
“ I will. And that brings me back to the question,
What am I to do? Ought I to report the case to
the police P ”
“ I am inclined to think not. You have hardly
enough facts. Of course, if Mr. Weiss has adminis-
tered poison ‘ unlawftu and maliciously ’ he has
committed a felony, and is liable under the Con-
solidation Acts of I861 to ten years’ penal servitude.
But I do not see how you could swear an informa-
tion. You don’t know that he administered the
poison—if poison has really been administered—and
you cannot give any reliable name or any address
whatever. Then there is the question of sleeping
sickness. You reject it for medical purposes, but
you could not swear, in a court of law, that this is not
a case of sleeping sickness."
“ No,” I admitted, “ I could not.“
“ Then I think the police would decline to move in
the matter, and you might ﬁnd that you had raised a
scandal in Dr. Stillbury’s practice to no purpose.”
“ So you think I had better do nothing in the
matter P ”
“ For the present. It is, of course, a medical
man’s duty to assist justice in any way that is
possible. But a doctor is not a detective ; he should
not go out of his way to assume police functions.
He should keep his eyes and ears open, and, though,
in general, he should keep his own counsel, it is his
duty to note very carefully anything that seems to
him likely to bear on any important legal issues.


Thorndyke De'vises a Scheme 51


It is not his business oﬁiciously to initiate criminal
inquiries, but it is emphatically his business to be
ready, if called upon, to assist justice with informa-
tion that his special knowledge and opportunities
have rendered accessible to him. You see the
bearing of this? ”
“ You mean that I should note down what I have
seen and heard and say nothing about it until I am
asked.”
“ Yes; if nothing further happens. But if you
should be sent for again, I think it is your duty
to make further observations with a view, if
necessary, to informing the police. It may be, for
instance, of vital importance to identify the house,
and it is your duty to secure the means of doing so.”
“ But, my dear Thorndyke,” I expostulated, “ I
have told you how I was conveyed to the house.
Now, will you kindly explain to me how a man,
boxed up in a pitch-dark carriage, is going to
identify any place to which he may be carried ? ”
“ The problem doesn’t appear to me to present
any serious difficulties,” he replied.
“ Doesn’t it?” said I. “To me it looks like
a pretty solid impossibility. But what do you
suggest ? Should I break out of the house and run
away up the street ? Or should I bore a hole through
the shutter of the carriage and peep out? ”
Thomdyke smiled indulgently. “ The methods
proposed by my learned friend display a certain
crudity inappropriate to the character of a man of
science ; to say nothing of the disadvantage of letting
the enemy into our counsels. No, no, Jervis ; we


52 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


can do something better than that. Just excuse me
for a minute while I run up to the laboratory.”
He hurried away to Polton’s sanctum on the upper
ﬂoor, leaving me to speculate on the method by
which he proposed that a man should be enabled, as
Sam Weller would express it, “ to see through a ﬂight
of stairs and a deal door ” ; or, what was equally
opaque, the wooden shutters of a closed carriage.
“ Now,” he said, when he returned a couple of
minutes later with a small, paper-covered notebook
in his hand, “ I have set Polton to work on a little
appliance that will, I think, solve our diﬂiculty, and
I will show you how I propose that you should make
your observations. First of all, we have to rule the
pages of this book into columns."
He sat down at the table and began methodically
to rule the pages each into three columns, two quite
narrow and one broad. The process occupied some
time, during which I sat and watched with impatient
curiosity the unhurried, precise movements of
Thomdyke’s pencil, all agog to hear the promised
explanation. He was just ﬁnishing the last page
when there came a gentle tap at the door, and Polton
entered with a satisﬁed smile on his dry, shrewd-
looking face and a small board in his hand.
“Will this do, sir?” he asked.
As he spoke he handed the little board to Thom-
dyke, who looked at it and passed it to me
“ The very thing, Polton,” my friend replied.
“ Where did you ﬁnd it ? It’s of no use for you to
pretend that you’ve made it in about two minutes
and a half.”


54 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


in one narrow column of your notebook 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.
Like this."
He took a loose sheet of paper and made one or
two sample entries on it in pencil, thus—
“ 9.40. SE. Start from home.
9.4: S.W. Granite setts.
9.43. S.W. Wood pavement. Hoofs I04.
9.47. W. by S Granite crossing. Macadam—
and so on. Note every change of direction, with the
time ; and whenever you hear or feel anything from
outside, note it, with the time and direction; and
don’t forget to note any variations in the horse’s
pace. You follow the process? ”
“ Perfectly. But do you think the method is
accurate enough to ﬁx the position of a house?
Remember, this is only a. pocket-compass with no
dial, and it will jump frightfully. And the mode of
estimating distance is very rough."
“ That is all perfectly true,” Thomdyke answered.
“ But you are overlooking certain important facts
The track-chart that you will produce can be checked
by other data. The house, for instance, has a
covered way by which you could identify it if you
knew approximately where to look for it. Then you
must remember that your carriage is not travelling
over a featureless plain. It is passing through
streets which have a determined position and
direction and which are accurately represented on
the ordnance map. I think, Jervis, that, in spite


“A Chiel’s dmang Te Takin’ Notes ” 55


of the apparent roughness of the method, if you make
your observations carefully, we shall have no trouble
in narrowing down the inquiry to a quite small area.
If we get the chance, that is to say.”
“ Yes, if we do. I am doubtful whether Mr. Weiss
will require my services again, but I sincerely hope he
will. It would be rare sport to locate his secret bur-
rowyall unsuspected. But now I must really be 0 .”
“ Good-bye, then,” said Thomdyke, slipping a
well-sharpened pencil through the rubber band that
ﬁxed the notebook to the board. “ Let me know
how the adventure progresses—if it progresses at
all—and remember, I hold your promise to come
and see me again quite soon 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.
Chapter III “ A Chiel’s Amang 2" e Takin’ Notes ”
HE attitude of the suspicious man tends to
generate in others the kind of conduct that
seems to justify his suspicions. In most of us there
lurks a certain strain of mischief which trustfulness
disarms but distrust encourages. The inexperi-
enced kitten which approaches us conﬁdingly with
arched back and upright tail, soliciting caresses,
generally receives the gentle treatment that it
expects; whereas the worldly-wise tom-cat, who,
in response to friendly advances, scampers away


56 j The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


and grins at us suspiciously from the fancied
security of an adjacent wall, impels us to accelerate
his retreat with a well-directed clod.
Now the proceedings of Mr. H. Weiss resembled
those of the tom-cat aforesaid and invited an
analogous reply. To a responsible professional
man his extraordinary precautions were at once
an affront and a challenge. Apart from graver
considerations, I found myself dwelling with unholy
pleasure on the prospect of locating the secret
hiding-place from which he seemed to grin at me
with such complacent deﬁance ; and I lost no time
and spared no trouble in preparing myself for the
adventure. The very hansom which bore me from
the Temple to Kennington Lane was utilized for
a preliminary test of Thomdyke’s little apparatus.
During the whole of that brief journey I watched
the compass closely, noted the feel and sound of
the road-material and timed the trotting of the
horse. And the result was quite encouraging. It
is true that the compass-needle oscillated wildly
to the vibration of the cab, but still its oscillations
took place around a deﬁnite point which was the
average direction, and it was evident to me that
the data it furnished were very fairly reliable. I felt
very little doubt, after the preliminary trial, as
to my being able to produce a moderately intelligible
track-chart if only I should get an opportunity
to exercise my skill. \
But it looked as if I should not. Mr. Weiss’s
promise to send for me again soon was not fulﬁlled.
Three days passed and still he made no sign. I


“A Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes” 57


began to fear that I had been too outspoken ; that
the shuttered carriage had gone forth to seek some
more conﬁding and easy-going practitioner, and that
our elaborate preparations had been made in vain.
When the fourth day drew towards a close and
still no summons had come, I was disposed reluc-
tantly to write the case off as a lost opportunity.
And at that moment, in the midst of my regrets,
the bottle-boy thrust an uncomely head in at the
door. His voice was coarse, his accent was hideous,
and his grammatical construction beneath contempt ;
but I forgave him all when I gathered the import of
his message.
“ Mr. Weiss’s carriage is waiting, and he says will
you come as quickly as you can because he’s took
very bad to-night.”
I sprang from my chair and hastily collected the
necessaries for the journey. The little board and
the lamp I put in my overcoat pocket ; I overhauled
the emergency bag and added to its usual contents
a bottle of permanganate of potassium which I
thought I might require. Then I tucked the even-
ing paper under my arm and went out.
The coachman, who was standing at the horse’s
head as I emerged, touched his hat and 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.
“ No, but I have provided myself with a lamp," I
replied, producing it and striking a match.


“A Chiel’s dmang Te Takin’ Notes” 59


been with a little more careful selection. At least
so it appeared to me, though, naturally, I was not
in a position to offer an authoritative criticism.
As far as I could judge, we followed the same
route as before. Once I heard a tug’s whistle and
knew that we were near the river, and we passed the
railway station, apparently at the same time as on
the previous occasion, for I heard a passenger train
start and assumed that it was the same train. We
crossed quite a number of thoroughfares with tram-
lines—I had no idea there were so many—and it
was a revelation to me to ﬁnd how numerous the
railway arches were in this part of London and how
continually the nature of the road-metal varied.
It was by no means a dull journey this time.
The incessant changes of direction and variations in
the character of the road kept me most uncommonly
busy ; 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 ; and I was quite taken by surprise when the
carriage slowed down and turned into the covered
way. Very hastily I scribbled down the ﬁnal entry
(“ 9.24. SE. In covered way ”), and having
closed the book and slipped it and the board into
my pocket, had just opened out the newspaper when
the carriage door was unlocked and opened, where-
upon I unhooked and blew out the lamp and pocketed
that too, reﬂecting that it might be useful later.
As on the last occasion, Mrs. Schallibaum stood
in the open doorway with a lighted candle. But
she was a good deal less self-possessed this time.


60 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


In fact she looked rathe; wild and terriﬁed. Even
by the candle-light I could see that she was very
pale and she seemed unable to keep still. As she
gave me the few necessary words of explanation, she
ﬁdgeted incessantly and her hands and feet were in
constant movement.
“ You had better come up with me at once,” she
said. “ Mr. Graves is much worse to-night. We
will wait not for Mr. Weiss.”
Without waiting for a reply she quickly ascended
the stairs and I followed. The room was in much
the same condition as before. But the patient was
not. As soon as I entered the room, a soft, rhyth-
mical gurgle from the bed gave me a very clear
warning of danger. I stepped forward quickly and
looked down at the prostrate ﬁgure, and the warning
gathered emphasis. The sick man’s ghastly face was
yet more ghastly ; his eyes were more sunken, his
skin more livid ; “ his nose was as sharp as a pen,”
and if he did not “ babble of green ﬁelds ” it was
because he seemed to be beyond even that. If it
had been a case of disease, I should have said at once
that he was dying. He had all the appearance of a
man in articulo mom's. Even as it was, feeling
convinced that the case was one of morphine poison-
ing, I was far from conﬁdent that I should be able
to draw him back from the extreme edge of vitality
on which he trembled so insecurely.
“ He is very ill? He is dying? ”
It was Mrs. Schallibaum’s voice; very low, but
eager and intense. I turned, with my ﬁnger on the
patient’s wrist, and looked into the face of the most


“.4 Chiel’s dmang Te Takin’ Notes ” 6r


thoroughly scared woman I have ever seen. She
made no attempt now to avoid the light, but looked
me squarely in the face, and I noticed, half—uncon-
sciously, that her eyes were brown and had a curious
strained expression.
“ Yes,” I answered, “ he is very ill. He is in
great danger.”
She still stared at me ﬁxedly for some seconds.
And then a very odd thing occurred. Suddenly
she squinted—squinted horribly ; not with the fami-
liar convergent squint which burlesque artists imi-
tate, but with external or divergent squint of extreme
near sight or unequal vision. The effect was quite
startling. One moment both her eyes were looking
straight into mine; the next, one of them rolled
round until it looked out of the uttermost corner,
leaving the other gazing steadily forward.
She was evidently conscious of the change, for
she turned her head away quickly and reddened
somewhat. But it was no time for thoughts of per-
sonal appearance.
“ You can save him, doctor! You will not let
him die 1 He must not be allowed to die ! ”
She spoke with as much passion as if he had been
the dearest friend that she had in the world, which
I suspected was far from being the case. But her
manifest terror had its uses.
. “ If anything is to be done to save him,” I said,
" it must be done quickly. I will give him some
medicine at once, and meanwhile you must make
some strong coffee.”
" Coffee ! ” she exclaimed. “ But we have none in


62 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


the house. Will not tea do, if I make it very strong ? ”
“ No, it will not. I must have coffee; and I must
have it quickly.”
“ Then I suppose I must go and get some. But
it is late. ‘ The shops will be shut. And I don’t like
leaving Mr. Graves.”
“ Can’t you send the coachman ? ” I asked.
She shook her head impatiently. “ No, that is
no use. I must wait until Mr. Weiss comes.”
“ That won’t do,” I said, sharply. “ He will slip
through our ﬁngers while you are waiting. You
must go and get that coffee at once and bring it to
me as soon as it is ready. And I want a tumbler
and some water.”
She brought me a water-bottle and glass from
the wash-stand and then, with a groan of despair,
hurried from the room.
I lost no time in applying the remedies that I had
to hand. Shaking out into the tumbler a few cry-
stals of potassium permanganate, I ﬁlled it up with
water and approached the patient. His stupor was
profound. I shook him as roughly as was safe in
his depressed condition, but elicited no resistance
or responsive movement. As it seemed very doubt-
ful whether he was capable of swallowing, I dared
not take the risk of pouring the liquid into his
mouth for fear of suffocating him. A stomach—tube
would have solved the difﬁculty, but, of course, I
had not one 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


“.4 Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes” 63


stethoscope and inserted into one end of it a vul-
canite ear-speculum to serve as a funnel. Then,
introducing the other end of the tube into the gullet ‘
as far as its length would permit, I cautiously poured
a small quantity of the permanganate solution into
the extemporized funnel. To my great relief a move-
ment of the throat showed that the swallowing re-
ﬂex 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.
The dose of permanganate that I had given was
enough to neutralize any reasonable quantity of the
poison that might yet remain in the stomach. I
had next to deal with that portion of the drug which
had already been absorbed and was exercising its
poisonous effects. Taking my hypodermic case from
my bag, I prepared in the syringe a full dose of atro-
pine sulphate, which I injected forthwith into the
unconscious man’s arm. And that was all that I
could do, so far as remedies were concerned, until
the coffee arrived.
I cleaned and put away the syringe, washed the
tube, and then, returning to the bedside, en-
deavoured to rouse the patient from his profound
lethargy. But great care was necessary. A little
injudicious roughness of handling, and that thready,
ﬂickering pulse might stop for ever ; and yet it was
almost certain that if he were not speedily aroused,
his stupor would gradually deepen until it shaded
off imperceptibly into death. I went to work very
cautiously, moving his limbs about, ﬂicking his
face and chest with the corner of a wet towel, tick-


64 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


ling the soles of his feet, and otherwise applying
stimuli that were strong without being violent.
So occupied was I with my efforts to resuscitate
my mysterious patient that I did not notice the
opening of the door, and it was with something
of a start that, happening to glance round, I per-
ceived at the farther end of the room the shadowy
ﬁgure of a man relieved by two spots of light re-
ﬂected from his spectacles. How long he had been
watching me I cannot say, but, when he saw that
I had observedhim, he came forward—though not
very far—and I saw that he was Mr. Weiss.
“ I am afraid,” he said, “ that you do not ﬁnd
my friend so well to-night? ”
“ So well ! ” I exclaimed. “ I don’t ﬁnd him well
at all. “I am exceedingly anxious about him.”
“ You don’t—er—anticipate anything of a—er
—anything serious, I hope? ”
“ There is no need to anticipate,” said I. “ It is
already about as serious as it can be. I think he
might die at any moment.”
“ Good God ! ” he gasped. “ You horrify me ! ”
He was not exaggerating. In his agitation, he
stepped forward into the lighter part of the room,
and I could see that his face was pale to ghastliness
-—except his nose and the adjacent red patches on
his cheeks, which stood out in grotesquely hideous
contrast. Presently, however, he recovered a little
and said:
“ I really think—at least I hope—that you take
an unnecessarily serious view of his condition. He
has been like this before, you know.”


“A Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes ” 65


I felt pretty certain that he had not, but there
was no use in discussing the question. I therefore
replied, as I continued my efforts to rouse the
patient :
“ That may or may not be. But in any case
there comes a last time ; and it may have come now.”
“ I hope not,” he said ; “ although I understand
that these cases always end fatally sooner or later.”
“ What cases? ” I asked.
“ I was referring to sleeping sickness; but per-
haps you have formed some other opinion as to the
nature of this dreadful complaint.”
I hesitated for a moment, and he continued :I' " As
to your suggestion that his symptoms might be due
to drugs, I think we may consider that as disposed
of. He has been watched, practically without cessa-
tion since you came last, and, moreover, I have
myself turned out the room and examined the bed
and have not found a trace of any drug. Have you
gone into the question of sleeping sickness? ”
I looked at the man narrowly before answering,
and distrusted him more than ever. But this was
no time for reticence. My concern was with the
patient and his present needs. After all, I was, as
Thorndyke had said, a doctor, not a detective, and
the circumstances called for straightforward speech
and action on my part.
“ I have considered that question,” I said, “ and
have come to a perfectly deﬁnite conclusion. His
symptoms are not those of sleeping sickness. They
are in my opinion undoubtedly due to morphine
poisoning.”
3


66 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ But my dear sir ! ” he exclaimed, “ the thing is
impossible! Haven’t I just told you that he has
been watched continuously? ”
“I can only judge by the appearances that I
ﬁnd,” I answered; and, seeing that he was about
to offer fresh objections, I continued: “ Don’t let
us waste precious time in discussion, or Mr. Graves
may be dead before we have reached a conclusion.
If you will hurry them up about the coffee that
I asked for some time ago, I will take the other
necessary measures, and perhaps .we may manage
to pull him round.”
The rather brutal decision of my manner evidently
daunted him. It must have been plain to him that
I was not prepared to accept any explanation of the
unconscious man’s condition other than that of mor-
phine poisoning ; whence the inference was pretty
plain that the alternatives were recovery or an
inquest. Replying stiﬂly that I “ must do as I
thought best,” he hurried from the room, leaving
me to continue my efforts without further inter-
ruption.
For some time these efforts seemed to make no
impression. The man lay as still and impassive as
a corpse excepting for the slow, shallow and rather
irregular breathing with its ominous accompanying
rattle. But presently, by imperceptible degrees,
signs of returning life began to make their appear-
ance. A sharp slap on the cheek with the wet towel
produced a sensible ﬂicker of the eyelids ; a similar
slap on the chest was followed by a slight gasp. A
pencil, drawn over the sole of the foot, occasioned


“ A Chiel’s dmang Te Takin’ Notes ” 67


a visible shrinking movement, and, on looking once
more at the eyes, I detected a slight change that
told me that the atropine was beginning to take
effect.
This was very encouraging, and, so far, quite satis-
factory, though it would have been premature to
rejoice. I kept the patient carefully covered and
maintained the process .of gentle irritation, moving
his limbs and shoulders, brushing his hair and
generally bombarding his deadened senses with small
but repeated stimuli. And under this treatment,
the improvement continued so far that on my bawl-
ing a question into his ear he actually opened his
eyes for an instant, though in another moment, the
lids had sunk back into their former position.
Soon after this, Mr. Weiss re-entered the room,
followed by Mrs. Schallibaum, who carried a small
tray, on which were a jug of coffee, a jug of milk, a
cup and saucer and a sugar basin.
“ How do you ﬁnd him now? ” Mr. Weiss asked
anxiously.
" I am glad to say that there is a distinct im-
provement,” I replied.’ “ But we must persevere.
He is by no means out of the wood yet.”
I examined the coffee, which looked black and
strong and had a very reassuring smell, and, pouring
out half a cupful, approached the bed.
“ Now, Mr. Graves," I shouted, “ we want you
to drink some of this."
The ﬂaccid eyelids lifted for an instant but there
was no other resPonse. I gently opened the un-
resisting mouth and ladled in a couple of spoonfuls


68 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


of coffee, which were immediately swallowed ; where-
upon I repeated the proceeding and continued at
short intervals until the cup was empty. The effect
of the new remedy soon became apparent. He began
to mumble and mutter obscurer in response to the
questions that I bellowed at him, and once or twice
he opened his eyes and looked dreamily into my face.
Then I sat him up and made him drink some coffee
from the cup, and, all the time, kept up a running
ﬁre of questions, which made up in volume of sound
for what they lacked of relevancy.
Of these proceedings Mr. Weiss and his house-
keeper were highly interested spectators, and the
former, contrary to his usual practice, came quite
close up to the bed, to get a better view.
“ It is really a most remarkable thing,” he said,
“ but it almost looks as if you were right, after all.
He is certainly much better. But tell me, would
this treatment produce a similar improvement if the
symptoms were due to disease? ”
“ No,” I answered, “ it certame would not.”
“ Then that seems to settle it. But it is a most
mysterious affair. Can you suggest any way in
which he can have concealed a store of the drug? ”
I stood up and looked him straight in the face;
it was the ﬁrst chance I had had of inspecting him
by any but the feeblest light, and I looked at him
very attentively. Now, it is a curious fact—though
one that most persons must have observed—that
there sometimes occurs a considerable interval be-
tween the reception of a visual impression and its
complete transfer to the consciousness. A thing


“ A Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes ” 69

may be seen, as it were, unconsciously, and the
impression consigned, apparently, to instant ob-
livion ; 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 this kind must have happened to
me now. 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. Weiss, perhaps embarrassed by
my keen regard of him, almost immediately with-
drew into the shadow—and my attention seemed
principally to be occupied by the odd contrast be-
tween the pallor of his face and the redness of his
nose and by the peculiar stiff, bristly character of
his eyebrows. But there was another fact, and a
Very curious one, that was observed by me subcon-
sciously and instantly forgotten, to be revived later
when I reﬂected on the events of the night. It was
this : ‘
As Mr. Weiss stood, with his head slightly turned,
I was able to look through one glass of his spec-
tacles at the wall beyond. On the wall was a framed
print ; and the edge of the frame, seen through the
spectacle-glass, appeared quite unaltered and free
from distortion, magniﬁcation or reduction, as if seen
through plain window-glass; and yet the reﬂec-
tions of the candle-ﬂame in the spectacles showed the
ﬂame upside .down, proving conclusively that the
glasses were concave on one surface at least. The
I


70 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


strange phenomenon was visible only for a moment
or two, and as it passed out of my sight it passed
also out of my mind.
“ No,” I said, replying to the last question ; “ I
can think of no way in which he could have effectu-
ally hidden a store of morphine. Judging by the
symptoms, he has taken a large dose, and, if he has
been in the habit of consuming large quantities, his
stock would be pretty bulky. I can offer no sugges-
tion whatever."
“ I suppose you consider him quite out of danger
now ? ”
“ Oh, not at all. I think we can pull him round
if we persevere, but he must not be allowed to sink
back into a state of coma. We must keep him on
the move until the effects of the drug have really
passed off. If you will put him into his dressing-
gown we will walk him up and down the room for
a while.”
“ But is that safe ? ” Mr. Weiss asked anxiously.
“Quite safe,” I answered. “ I will watch his
pulse carefully. The danger is in the possibility,
or rather certainty, of a relapse if he is not kept
moving.”
With obvious unwillingness and disapproval, Mr.
Weiss produced a dressing-gown and together we
invested the patient in it. Then we dragged him,
very limp, but not entirely unresisting, out of bed
and stood him on his feet. He opened his eyes and
blinked owlishly ﬁrst at one_ and then at the other
of us, and mumbled a few unintelligible words of
protest -; regardless of which, we thrust his feet into


“A Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes” 71


slippers and endeavoured to make him walk. At
ﬁrst he seemed unable to stand, and we had to sup-
port him by his arms as we urged him forward ; but
presently his trailing legs began to make deﬁnite
walking movements, and, after one or two turns up
and down the room, he was not only able partly to
support his weight, but showed evidence of reviving
consciousness in more energetic protests.
At this point Mr. Weiss astonished me by trans-
ferring the arm that he held to the housekeeper.
“ If you will excuse me, doctor,” said he, “ I will
go now and attend to some rather important business
that I have had to leave unﬁnished. Mrs. Schalli-
baum will be able to give you all the assistance that
you require, and will order the carriage when you
think it safe to leave the patient. In case I should
not see you again I will say ‘ good night.’ I hope
you won’t think me very unceremonious.”
He shook hands with me and went out of the
room, leaving me, as I have said, profoundly aston-
ished that he should consider any business of more
moment than the condition of his friend, whose life,
even now, was but hanging by a thread. However,
it was really no concern of mine. I could do with-
out him, and the resuscitation of this unfortunate
half-dead man gave me occupation enough to engross
my whole attention.
The melancholy progress up and down the room
re-commenced, and with it the mumbled protests
from the patient. As we walked, and especially as
we turned, I caught frequent glimpses of the house-
keeper’s face. But it was nearly always in proﬁle.


“A Chiel’s dmang Te Takin’ Notes ” 73

“ You must walk about a little longer, Mr.
Graves,” I said. “ It would be very bad for you
to go to sleep again.”
He looked at me with a curious, dull surprise, and
reﬂected awhile as if in some perplexity. Then he
looked at me again and said:
“ Thing, sir, you are mistake—mistaken me—
mist——.” .
Here Mrs. Schallibaum interrupted sharply:
“ The doctor thinks it’s good for you to walk about.
You’ve been sleeping too much. He doesn’t want
you to sleep any more just now.”
" Don’t wanter sleep; wanter lie down,” said the
patient.
“ But you mustn’t lie down for alittle while. You
must walk about for a few minutes more. And
you’d better not talk. Just walk up and down.”
“ There’s no harm in his talking,” said I ; “ in fact
it’s good for him. It willhelp to keep him awake.”
“ I should think it would tire him,” said Mrs.
Schallibaum ; “ and it worries me to hear him ask-
ing to lie down when we can’t let him.”
She spoke sharply and in an unnecessarily high
tone so that the patient could not fail to hear.
Apparently he took in the very broad hint contained
in the concluding sentence, for he trudged wearily
and unsteadily up and down the room for some time
without speaking, though he continued to look at
me from time to time as if something in my appear-
ance puzzled him exceedingly. At length his in-
tolerable longing for repose overcame his politeness
and he returned to the attack.


“A Chiel’s Almang Te Takin’ Notes ” 75


The housekeeper stroked his head, keeping her face
half-turned from me—as she had done almost con-
stantly, to conceal the squinting eye, as I assumed
—and said:
" Need we keep you any longer, doctor? It is
getting very late and you have a long way to go.”
I looked doubtfully at the patient. I was loath
to leave him, distrusting these people as I did. But
I had my work to do on the morrow, with, perhaps,
a night call or two in the interval, and the endurance
even of a general practitioner has its limits.
“ I think I heard the carriage some time ago,”
Mrs. Schallibaum added.
I rose hesitatingly and looked at my watch. It
had turned half-past eleven.
“ You understand,” I said in a low voice, “ that
the danger is not over? If he is left now he will
fall asleep, and in all human probability will never
wake. You clearly understand that? ”
“ Yes, quite clearly. I promise you he shall not
be allowed to fall asleep again."
As she spoke, she looked me full in the face for
a few moments, and I noted that her eyes had a
‘ perfectly normal appearance, without any trace
whatever of a squint.
“ Very well,” I said. “ On that understanding I
will go now; and I shall hope to ﬁnd our friend
quite recovered at my next visit.”
I turned to the patient, who was already dozing,
and shook his hand heartily.
“ Good-bye, Mr. Graves ! ” I said. “ I am sorry
to have to disturb your repose so much; but


76 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


you must keep awake, you know. Won’t do to go
to sleep.”
“ Ver’ well,” he replied drowsily. “ Sorry t’ give
you all this trouble. L’ keep awake. But I think
you’re n1istak’n——”
“ He says it’s very important that you shouldn’t
go to sleep, and that I am to see that you don’t. Do
you understand ? "
“ Yes, I un’stan’. But why does this gennle-
m'n——? ”
“ Now it’s of no use for you to ask a lot of ques-
tions,” Mrs. Schallibaum said playfully ; “ we’ll talk
to you to_morrow. Good night, doctor. I‘ll light
you down the stairs, but I won’t come down with
you, or the patient will be falling asleep again.”
Taking this deﬁnite dismissal, I retired, followed
by a dreamily surprised glance from the sick man.
The housekeeper held the candle over the balusters
until I reached the bottom of the stairs, when I
perceived through the open door along the passage
a glimmer of light from the carriage lamps. The
coachman was standing just outside, faintly illumin-
ated by the very dim lamplight, and as I stepped
into the carriage he remarked in his Scotch dialect
that I “ seemed to have been makin’ a nicht of i .”
He did not wait for any reply—none being in fact
needed—but shut the door and locked it.
I lit my little pocket-lamp and hung it on the back
cushion. I even drew the board and notebook from
my pocket. But it seemed rather unnecessary to
take a fresh set of notes, and, to tell the truth, I
rather shirked the labour, tired as I was after my


“.4 Chiel’s Amang Te Takin’ Notes” 77


late exertions ; besides, I wanted to think over the
events of the evening, while they were fresh in my
memory. Accordingly I put away the notebook,
ﬁlled and lighted my pipe, and settled myself to
review the incidents attending my second visit to
this rather uncanny house.
Considered in leisurely retrospect, that visit offered
quite a number of problems that called for eluci-
dation. There was the patient’s condition, for
instance, Any doubt as to the cause of his symp-
toms was set at rest by the effect of the antidotes.
Mr. Graves was certainly under the inﬂuence of
morphine, and the only doubtful question was how
he had become so. That he had taken the poison
himself was incredible. No morphinomaniac would
take such a knock-down dose. It was practically
certain that the poison had been administered by
someone else, and, on Mr. Weiss’s own showing,
there was no one but himself and the housekeeper
who could have administered it. And to this con-
clusion all the other very queer circumstances
pointed.
What were these circumstances? They were,
as I have said, numerous, though many of them
seemed trivial. To begin with, Mr. Weiss’s habit
of appearing some time after my arrival and
disappearing some time before my departure was
decidedly odd. But still more odd was his sudden
departure this evening on what looked like a mere
pretext. That departure coincided in time with the
sick man’s recovery of the power of speech. Could
it be that Mr. Weiss was afraid that the half-con-


78 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


scious man might say something compromising to
him in my presence ? It looked rather like it. And
yet he had gone away and left me with the patient
and the housekeeper.
But when I came to think about it I remembered
that Mrs. Schallibaum had shown some anxiety to
prevent the patient from talking. She had inter-
rupted him more than once, and had on two
occasions broken in when he seemed to be about to
ask me some question. I was “ mistaken ” about
something. What was that something that he
wanted to tell me?
It had struck me as singular that there should
be no coffee in the house, but a sufﬁciency 0f tea.
Germans are not usually tea-drinkers and they do
take coffee. But perhaps there was nothing in this.
Rather more remarkable was the invisibility of the
coachman. Why could he not be sent to fetch the
coffee, and why did not he, rather than the house-
keeper, come to take the place of Mr. Weiss when
the latter had to go away.
There were other points, too. I recalled the word
that sounded like “ Pol’n,” which Mr. Graves had
used in speaking to the housekeeper. Apparently
it was a Christian name of some kind ; but why did
Mr. Graves call the woman by her Christian name
when Mr. Weiss addressed her formally as Mrs.
Schallibaum ? And, as to the woman herself: what
was the meaning of that curious disappearing squint?
Physically it presented no mystery. The woman
had an ordinary divergent squint, and, like many
people, who suffer from this displacement, could, by


80 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


mixture for Mr. Graves and handed it to the coach-
man, I raked the ashes of the surgery ﬁre together
and sat down to smoke a ﬁnal pipe while I reﬂected
once more on the singular and suspicious case in
which I had become involved. But fatigue soon
put an end to my meditations; and having come
to the conclusion that the circumstances demanded
a further consultation with Thomdyke, I turned
down the gas to a microscopic blue spark and betook
myself to bed.
Chapter IV The Oﬁeial View
ROSE on the following morning still possessed
by the determination to make some oportunity
during the day to call on Thomdyke and take his
advice on the now urgent question as to what I was
to do. I use the word “ urgent ” advisedly; for
the incidents of the preceding evening had left me
with the ﬁrm conviction that poison was being
administered for some purpose to my mysterious
patient, and that no time must be lost if his life
was to be saved. Last night he had escaped only
by the narrowest margin—~assuming him to be still
alive—and it was only my unexpectedly ﬁrm atti—
tude that had compelled Mr. Weiss to agree to
restorative measures.
I That I should be sent for again I had not the
slightest expectation. If what I so strongly sus-
pected was true, Weiss would call in some other
doctor, in the hope of better luck, and it was impera-


The Oﬂz'eial View 81

tive that he should be stopped before it was too late.
This was my view, but I meant to have Thomdyke’s
opinion, and act under his direction, but
" The best laid plans of mice and men
Gang aft agley.”
When I came downstairs and took a preliminary
glance at the rough memorandum-book, kept by
the bottle-boy, or, in his absence, by the housemaid,
I stood aghast. The morning’s entries looked already
like a sample page of the Post Ofﬁce directory. The
new calls alone were more than equal to an ordinary
day’s work, and the routine visits remained to be
added. Gloomily wondering whether the Black
Death had made a sudden reappearance in Eng-
land, I hurried to the dining-room and made a
hasty breakfast, interrupted at intervals by the
apparition of the bottle-boy to announce new
messages.
The ﬁrst two or three visits solved the mystery.
An epidemic of inﬂuenza had descended on the
neighbourhood, and I was getting not only our own
normal work but a certain amount of overﬂow from
other practices. Further, it appeared that a strike
in the building trade had been followed immediately
by a widespread failure of health among the brick-
layers who were members of a certain beneﬁt club ;
which accounted for the remarkable suddenness of
the outbreak.
Of course, my contemplated visit to Thorndyke
was out of the question. I should have to act on
my own responsibility. But in the hurry and rush
and anxiety of the work—~for some of the cases were


82 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


severe and even critical—~I had no opportunity to
consider any course of action, nor time to carry it
out. Even with the aid of a hansom which I char-
tered, as Stillbury kept no carriage, I had not
ﬁnished my last visit until near on midnight, and
was then so spent with fatigue that I fell asleep
over my postponed supper.
As the next day opened with a further increase
of work, I sent a telegram to Dr. Stillbury at Hast-
ings, whither he had gone, like a wise man, to recruit
after a slight illness. I asked for authority to engage
an assistant, but the reply informed me that Stillbury
himself was on his way to town ; and to my relief,
when I dropped in at the surgery for a cup of tea,
I. found him rubbing his hands over the open day-
book.
“ It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good,” he
remarked cheerftu as we shook hands. “ This will
pay, the expenses of my holiday,,including you. By
the way, you are not anxious to be off, I suppose ? "
As a matter of fact, I was ; for I had decided to
accept Thomdyke’s offer, and was now eager to take
up my duties with him. But it would have been
shabby to leave Stillbury to battle alone with this
rush of work or to seek the services of a strange
assistant.
“ I should like to get off as soon as you can spare
me,” I replied, " but I’m not going to leave you in
the lurc .”
“ That’s a good fellow,” said Stillbury. “ I knew
you wouldn’t. Let us have some tea and divide up
the work. Anything of interest going? “


\ The Oﬂicial View 83


There were one or two unusual cases on the list,
and, as we marked off our respective patients, I gave
him the histories in brief synopsis. And then I
opened the subject of my mysterious experiences at
the house of Mr. Weiss.
“ There’s another affair that I want to tell you
about; rather‘ an unpleasant business.”
“ Oh, dear ! ” exclaimed Stillbury. He put down
his cup and regarded me with quite painful anxiety.
“ It looks to me like an undoubted case of criminal
poisoning,” I continued.
Stillbury’s face cleared instantly. “ Oh, I’m glad
it’s nothing more than that,” he said with an air
of relief. “ I was afraid, it was some confounded
woman. There’s always that danger, you know,
when a locum is young and happens—if I may say
so, Jervis—to be a good-looking fellow. Let us
hear about this case.”
I gave him a condensed narrative of my con-
nection with the mysterious patient, omitting any
reference to Thorndyke, and passing lightly over my
efforts to ﬁx the position of the house, and wound
up with the remark that the facts ought certainly
to be communicated to the police.
“ Yes,” he admitted reluctantly, “ I suppose
you’re right. Deuced unpleasant though. Police
cases don’t do a practice any good. They waste a
lot of time, too; keep you hanging about to give
evidence. Still, you are quite right. ,We can’t
stand by and see the poor devil poisoned without
making some effort. But I don’t believe the police
will do anything in the matter."


84. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ Don’t you really? ”
“ No, I don’t. They like to have things pretty
well cut and dried before they act. A prosecution
is an expensive affair, so they don’t care to prose-
cute unless they are fairly sure of a conviction. If
they fail they get hauled over the coals.”
“ But don’t you think they would get a convic-
tion in this case ? " .
“ Not on your evidence, Jervis. They might pick
up something fresh, but, if they didn’t they would
fail. You haven’t got enough hard-baked facts to
upset a capable defence. Still, that isn’t our affair.
You want to put the responsibility on the police and
I entirely agree with you.”
“ There ought not to be any delay,” said I.
“ There needn’t be. I shall look in on Mrs.
Wackford and you have to see the Rummel chil-
dren; we shall pass the station on our way. Why
shouldn’t we drop in and see the inspector or super-
intendent ? ”
The suggestion met my views exactly. As soon
as we had ﬁnished tea, we set forth, and in about
ten minutes found ourselves in the bare and for—
bidding ofﬁce attached to the station.
The presiding officer descended from a high stool,
and, carefully laying down his pen, shook hands
cordially.
“ And what can I do for you gentlemen?” he
asked, with an affable smile.
Stillbury proceeded to open our business.
“ My friend here, Dr. Jervis, who has very kindly
been looking after my work for a week or two, has


The Oﬂeial View 85


had a most remarkable experience, and he wants
to tell you about it.”
“ Something in my line of business ? ” the ofﬁcer
inquired.
“ That,” said I, “ is for you to judge. I think
it is, but you may think otherwise ” ; and hereupon,
without further preamble, I plunged into the history
of the case, giving him a condensed statement similar
to that which I had already made to Stillbury.
He listened with close attention, jotting down
from time to time a brief note on a sheet of paper;
and, when I had ﬁnished, he wrote out in a black-
covered notebook a short précis of my statement.
" I have written down here," he said, “ the sub-
stance of what you have told me. I will read the
deposition over to you, and, if it is correct, I will
ask you to sign i .”
He did so, and, when I had signed the document,
I asked him what was likely to be done in the matter.
“ I am afraid,” he replied, “ that we can’t take
any active measures. You have put us on our guard
and we shall keep our eyes open. But I think that
is all we can do, unless we hear something further.”
" But,” I exclaimed, “ don’t you think that it is
a very suspicious affair? ”
“ I do,” he replied. “ A very ﬁshy business
indeed, and you were quite right to come and tell
“as about i .”
“ It seems a pity not to take some measures,” I
said. “ While you are waiting to hear something
further, they may give the poor wretch a fresh dose
and kill him.”


86 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ In which case we should hear something further,
unless some fool of a doctor were to give a death
certiﬁcate.”
“ But that is very unsatisfactory. The man
ought not to be allowed to die.”
“ I quite agree with you, sir. But we’ve no
evidence that he is going to die. His friends sent
for you, and you treated him skilftu and left him in
a fair way to recovery. That’s all that we really
know about it. Yes, I know,” the oﬂicer continued
as I made signs of disagreement, “ you think that
a crime is possibly going to be committed and that
we ought to prevent it. But you overrate our
powers. We can only act on evidence that a crime
has actually been committed or is actually being
attempted. Now we have no such evidence. Look
at your statement, and tell me what you can swear
to.”
“ I think I could swear that Mr. Graves had taken
a poisonous dose of morphine."
“ And who gave him that poisonous dose? ”
“ I very strongly suspect ”
" That’s no good, sir,” interrupted the officer.
"‘ Suspicion isn’t evidence. We should want you
to swear an information and give us enough facts
to make out a prirmi facie case against some deﬁnite
person. And you couldn’t do it. Your informa-
tion amounts to this: that a certain person has
taken a poisonous dose of morphine and apparently
recovered. That’s all. You can’t swear that the
names given to you c real names, and you can’t
give us any address r even any locality.”


The Oﬂicial View 87


“ I took some compass bearings in the carriage,”
I said. “ You could locate the house, I think, with-
out much difficulty.”
The ofﬁcer smiled faintly and ﬁxed an abstracted
gaze on the clock.
“ You could, sir,” he replied. “ I have no doubt
whatever that you could. I couldn’t. But, in any
case, we haven’t enough to go upon. If you learn
anything fresh, I hope you will let me know; and
I am very much obliged to you for taking so much
trouble in the matter. Good evening sir. Good
evening, Dr. Stillbury.”
He shook hands with us both genially, and, accept-
ing perforce this very polite but unmistakable dis-
missal, we took our departure. ,
Outside the station, Stillbury heaved a comfort-
able sigh. He was evidently relieved to ﬁnd that
no upheavals were to take place in his domain.
“ I thought that would be their attitude,” he said,
“ and they are quite right, you know. The func-
tion of law is to prevent crime, it is true ; but pro-
phylaxis in the sense in which we understand it is
not possible in legal practice.”
Iassentedwithout enthusiasm. It was disappoint-
ing to ﬁnd that no precautionm measures were to
be taken. However, I had done all that I could
in the matter. No further responsibility lay upon
me, and, as it was practically certain that I had seen
and heard the last of Mr. Graves and his mysterious
household, I dismissed the case from my mind. At
the next corner Stillbury and I parted to go our
respective Ways ; and my attention was soon trans-


88 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


ferred from the romance of crime to the realities of
epidemic inﬂuenza.
The plethora of work in Dr. Stillbury’s practice
continued longer than I had bargained for. Day
after day went by and still found me tramping the
dingy streets of Kennington or scrambling up and
down narrow stairways; turning in at night dead
tired, or turning out half awake to the hideous jangle
of the night bell.
It was very provoking. For months I had resisted
Thorndyke’s persuasion to give up general practice
and join him. Not from lack of inclination, but
from a deep suspicion that he was thinking of my
wants rather than his own; that his was a charit-
able rather than a business proposal. Now that I
knew this not to be the case, I was impatient to join
him ; and, as I trudged through the dreary thorough-
fares of this superannuated suburb, with its once
'rustic villas and its faded gardens, my thoughts
would turn enviously to the quiet dignity of the
Temple and my friend’s chambers in King’s Bench
Walk.
The closed carriage appeared no more; nor did
any whisper either of good or evil reach me in con-
nection with the mysterious house from which it had
come. Mr. Graves had apparently gone out of my
life for ever.
But if he had gone out of my life, he had not
gone out of my memory. Often, as I walked my
rounds, would the picture of that dimly-lit room
rise unbidden. Often would I ﬁnd myself looking
once more into that ghastly face, so worn, so wasted


The Oﬂieial View a 89


and haggard, andsyet so far from repellent. All the
incidents of that last night would reconstitute them-
selves with a vividness that showed the intensity
of the impression that they had made at the time. I
would have gladly forgotten the whole affair, for
every incident of it was fraught with discomfort.
But it clung to my memory; it haunted me; and
ever as it returned it bore with it the disquieting
questions : Was Mr. Graves still alive ? And,
if he was not, was there really nothing which could
have been done to save him?
Nearly a month passed before the practice began
to show signs of returning to its normal condition.
Then the daily lists became more and more con-
tracted and the day’s work proportionately shorter.
And thus the term of my servitude came to an end.
One evening, as we were writing up the day-book,
Stillbury remarked:
“ I almost think, Jervis, I could manage by myself
now. I know you are only staying on for my sake."
“ I am staying on to ﬁnish my engagement, but
I shan’t be sorry to clear out if you can do without
me.”
“ I think I can. When would you like to be off ? ”
“ As soon as possible. Say to-morrow morning,
after I have made a few visits and transferred the
patients to you."
.. “ Very well,” said Stillbury. “ Then I will give
you your cheque and settle up everything to-night,
so that you shall be free to go off when you like
to-morrow morning.”
Thus ended my connection with Kennington Lane.


90 The Mystery of 3r, New Inn


On the following day at about noon, I found myself
strolling across Waterloo Bridge with the sensa-
tions of a newly liberated convict and a cheque for
twenty-ﬁve guineas in my pocket. My luggage was
to follow when I sent for it. Now, unhampered
even by a hand-bag, I joyftu descended the steps
at the north end of the bridge and headed for King’s
Bench Walk by way of the Embankment and Middle
Temple Lane.
Chapter V yeﬂrey Blackmare’s Will
Y arrival at Thorndyke’s chambers was not
unexpected, having been heralded by a pre-
monitory post-card. vThe “ oak ” was open and an
application of the little brass knocker of the inner
door immediately produced my colleague himself
and a very hearty welcome.
“ At last,” said Thomdyke, “ you have come forth
from the house of bondage. I began to think that
you had taken up your abode in Kennington for
good.”
“ I was beginning, myself, to wonder when I
should escape. But here I am ; and I may say at
once that I am ready to shake the dust of general
practice off my feet for ever—that is, if you are still
willing to have me as your assistant.”
“ Willing l ” exclaimed Thomdyke, ” Barkis him-
was not more willing than I. You will be invalu-
able to me. Let us settle the terms of our comrade-
ship forthwith, and to-morrow we will take measures


Yeﬂrey Blackmore’s Will 91


to enter you as a student of the Inner Temple.
Shall we have our talk in the open air and the spring
sunshine ? ”
I agreed readily to this proposal, for it was a
bright, sunny day and warm for the time of year-—
the beginning of April. We descended to the Walk
and thence slowly made our way to the quiet court
behind the church, where poor old Oliver Goldsmith
lies, as he would surely have wished to lie, in the
midst of all that had been dear to him in his
chequered life. I need not record the matter of our
conversation. To Thorndyke’s proposals I had no
objections to offer but my own unworthiness and
his excessive liberality. A few minutes saw our
covenants fully agreed upon, and when Thomdyke
had noted the points on a slip of paper, signed and
dated it and handed it to me, the business was at
an end.
" There,” my colleague said with a smile as he
put away his pocket—book, “ if people would only
settle their affairs in that way, a good part of the
occupation of lawyers would be gone. Brevity
is the soul of wit ; and the fear of simplicity is the
beginning of litigation.”
“ And now,” I said, “ I propose that we go and
feed. I will invite you to lunch to celebrate our
contrac .” '
“ My learned junior is premature,” he replied.
" I had already arranged a little festivity—or
rather had modiﬁed one that was already arranged.
You remember Mr. Marchmont, the solicitor?"
" Yes.”


92 The Mystery J 31, New Inn


“ He called this morning to ask me to lunch with
him and a new client at the ‘ Cheshire Cheese.’ I
accepted and notiﬁed him that I should bring
you.”
“ Why the ‘ Cheshire Cheese ' ? " I asked.
“ Why not ? Marchmont’s reasons for the selec-
tion were, ﬁrst, that his client has never seen an
old-fashioned London tavern, and second, that this
is Wednesday and he, Marchmont, has a gluttonous
affection for a really ﬁne beef-steak pudding. You
don’t object, I hope? ”
“ Oh, not at all. In fact, now that you mention
it, my own sensations incline me to sympathize with
Marchmont. I breakfasted rather early.”
“ Then come,” said Thomdyke. “ The assign-
ation is for one o’clock, and, if we walk slowly, we
shall just hit it 0 .”
We sauntered up Inner Temple Lane, and, cross-
ing Fleet Street, headed sedately for the tavern.
As we entered the quaint old-world dining-room,
Thomdyke looked round and a gentleman, who
was seated with a companion at a table in one
of the little boxes or compartments, rose and saluted
us.
“ Let me introduce you to my friend Mr. Stephen
Blackmore,” he said as we approached. Then,
turning to his companion, he introduced us by our
respective names.
“ I engaged this box,” he continued, “ so that
we might be private if we wished to have a little
preliminary chat; not that beef-steak pudding is
a. great help to conversation. But when people


Yeﬂrey Blackmore’s Will 9 3


have a certain business in view, their talk is sure
to drift towards it, sooner or later.”
Thorndyke and I sat down opposite the lawyer
and his client, and we mutually inspected one
another. Marchmont I already knew; an elderly,
professional-looking man, a typical solicitor of the
old school; fresh-faced, precise, rather irascible,
and conveying a not unpleasant impression of
taking a reasonable interest in his diet. The other
man was quite young, not more than ﬁve-and-
twenty, and was a ﬁne athletic-looking fellow
with a healthy, out-of-door complexion and an
intelligent and highly prepossessing face. I took
a liking to him at the ﬁrst glance, and so, I saw,
did Thorndyke.
“ You two gentlemen,” said Blackmore, address-
ing us, “ seem to be quite old acquaintances. I
have heard so much about you from my friend,
Reuben Homby.”
“ Ah I ” exclaimed Marchmont, “ that was a
queer case—' The Case of the Red Thumb Mark,’
as the papers called it. It was an eye—opener to
old-fashioned lawyers like myself. We’ve had
scientiﬁc witnesses before—and bullied ’em properly,
by Jove! when they wouldn’t give the evidence
that we wanted. But the scientiﬁc lawyer is some-
thing new. His appearance in court made us all
sit up, I can assure you.”
“ I hope we shall make you sit up again,” said
Thorndyke.
“ You won’t this time,” said Marchmont. “ The
issues in this case of my friend Blackmore’s are


94 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


purely legal; or rather, there are no issues at all.
There is nothing in dispute. I tried to prevent
Blackmore from consulting you, but he wouldn’t
listen to reason. Here! Waiter! How much
longer are we to be waiters? We shall die of old
age before we get our victuals ! ”
The waiter smiled apologetically. “ Yessirl ”
said he. “ Coming now, sir.” And at this very
moment there was borne into the room a Gar-
gantuan pudding in a great bucket of a basin,
which being placed on a three-legged stool was
forthwith attacked ferociously by the white-clothed,
white-capped carver. We watched the process—-
as did every one present—with an interest not
entirely gluttonous, for it added a pleasant touch
to the picturesque old room, with its sanded ﬂoor,
its homely, pew-like boxes, its high-backed settles
and the friendly portrait of the “ great lexico-
grapher ” that beamed down on us from the wall.
“ This is a very different affair from your great,
glittering modern restaurant,” Mr. Marchmont re-
marked.
" It is indeed,” said Blackmore, “ and if this is
the way in which our ancestors lived, it would seem
that they had a better idea of comfort than we
have.”
There was a short pause, during which Mr.
Marchmont glared hungrily at the pudding; then
Thomdyke said:
“ So you refused to listen to reason, Mr. Black-
more ? ”
“ Yes. You see, Mr Marchmont and his partner


Yeﬂrey Blackmore’s Will 95


had gone into the matter and decided that there
was nothing to be done. Then I happened to
mention the affair to Reuben Hornby, and he
urged me to ask your advice on the case.”
“ Like his impudence,” growled Marchmont, " to
meddle with my client.”
“ On which,” continued Blackmore, “ I spoke to
Mr. Marchmont and he agreed that it was worth
while to take your opinion on the case, though
he warned me to cherish no hopes, as the affair
was not really within your specialty.”
“ So you understand,” said Marchmont, “ that
we expect nothing. This is quite a forlorn hope.
We are taking your opinion as a mere formality, to
be able to say that we have left nothing untried.”
“ That is an encouraging start,” Thorndyke
remarked. “It leaves me unembarrassed by the
possibility of failure. But meanwhile you are
arousing in me a devouring curiosity as to the
nature of the case. Is it highly conﬁdential?
Because if not, I would mention that Jervis has
now joined me as my permanent colleague.”
“ It isn’t conﬁdential at all,” said Marchmont.
" The public are in full possession of the facts,
and we should be only too happy to put them in
still fuller possession, through the medium of the
Probate Court, if we could ﬁnd a reasonable pretext.
But we can’t."
Here the waiter charged our table with the fussy
rapidity of the overdue.
“ Sorry to keep you waiting, sir. Rather early,
sir. Wouldn’t like it underdone, sir." i


96 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


Marchmont inspected his plate critically and re-
marked:
“ I sometimes suspect these oysters of being
mussels ; and I’ll swear the larks are sparrows.”
“ Let us hope so,” said Thomdyke. “ The lark
is better employed ‘ at Heaven’s gate singing ’ than
garnishing a beef-steak pudding. But you were
telling us about your case.”
“ So I was. Well it’s just a matter of—ale or
claret ? Oh, claret, I know. You despise the good
old British John Barleycorn.”
“ He that drinks beer thinks beer,” retorted
Thomdyke. " But you were saying that it is just
a matter of-—-—? ”
“ A matter of a perverse testator and an ill-
drawn will. A peculiarly irritating case, too,
because the defective will replaces a perfectly
sound one, and the intentions of the testator were
—er-—were—excellent ale, this. A little heady,
perhaps, but sound. Better than your sour French
wine, Thomdyke—were—er—were quite obvious.
What he evidently desired was—mustard ? Better
have some mustard. No? Well, well! Even
a Frenchman would take mustard. You can have
no appreciation of ﬂavour, Thomdyke, if you
take your victuals in that crude, unseasoned state.
And, talking of ﬂavour, do you suppose that there
is really any difference between that of a lark and
that of a sparrow? ”
Thomdyke smiled grimly. “ I should suppose,”
said he, “ that they were indistinguishable ; but the
question could easily be put to the test of experimen .”


Yeﬂrey Blackmore’s Will 97


“ That is true,” agreed Marchmont, “ and it
would really be worth trying, for, as you say,
sparrows are more easily obtainable than larks.
But, about this will. I was saying—er—now,
what was I saying? ”
“ I understood you to say,’ replied Thorndyke,
“ that the intentions of the testator were in some
way connected with mustard. Isn’t that so,
Jervis ? ”
“ That was what I gathered,” said I.
Marchmont gazed at us for a moment with a
surprised exPression and then, laughing good-
humouredly, fortiﬁed himself with a draught of
ale.
“ The moral of which is," Thorndyke added,
“ that testamentary dispositions should not be
mixed up with beef-steak pudding.”
“ I believe you’re right, Thorndyke,” said the
unabashed solicitor. “ Business is business and
eating is eating. We had better talk over our case
in my ofﬁce or your chambers after lunch.”
“ Yes,” said Thorndyke, “ come over to the
Temple with me and I will give you a cup of coffee
to clear your brain. Are there any documents? ”
“ I have all the papers here in my bag,” replied
Marchmont; and the conversation—such conversa-
tion as is possible “ when beards wag all ” over the
festive board—drifted into other channels.
As soon as the meal was ﬁnished and the reckon-
ing paid, we trooped out of Wine Oﬂice Court, and,
insinuating ourselves through the line of empty
hansoms that, in those days, crawled in a con-
I
4


98 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


tinuous procession on either side of Fleet Street,
betook ourselves by way of Mitre Court to King’s
Bench Walk. There, when the coffee had been
requisitioned and our chairs drawn up around the
ﬁre, Mr. Marchmont unloaded from his bag a por-
tentous bundle of papers, and we addressed our-
selves to the business in hand.
" Now,” said Marchmont, “ let me repeat what
I said before. Legally speaking, we have no case——
not the ghost of one. But my client wished to
take your opinion, and I agreed on the bare chance
that you might detect some point that we had
overlooked. I don’t think you will, for we have
gone into the case very thoroughly, but still, there
is the inﬁnitesimal chance and we may as well
take it. Would you like to read the two wills, or
shall I ﬁrst explain the circumstances? ”
“ I think,” replied Thomdyke, “ a narrative of
the events in the order of their occurrence would be
most helpful. I should like to know as much as
possible about the testator before I examine the
documents.”
“ Very well,” said Marchmont. “ Then I will
begin with a recital of the circumstances, which,
brieﬂy stated, are these: My client, Stephen
Blackmore, is the son of Mr. Edward Blackmore,
deceased. Edward Blackmore had two brothers
who survived him, John, the elder, and Jeffrey,
the younger. Jeffrey is the testator in this case.
“ Some two years ago, Jeffrey Blackmore executed
a will by which he made his nephew Stephen his
executor and sole legatee ; and a few months later


Yeﬂ'rey Blackmore’s Will 99


he added a codicil giving two hundred and ﬁfty
pounds to his brother John.”
“ What was the value of the estate ? ” Thomdyke
asked.
“ About three thousand ﬁve hundred pounds, all
invested in Consols. The testator had a pension
from the Foreign Oﬂice, on which he lived, leaving
his capital untouched. Soon after having made
his will, he left, the rooms in Jermyn Street, where
he had lived for some years, stored his furniture
and went to Florence. From thence he moved on
to Rome and then to Venice and other places in
Italy, and so continued to travel about until the
end of last September, when it appears that he
returned to England, for at the beginning [of October
he took a set of chambers in New Inn, which be
furnished with some of the things from his old
rooms. As far as we can make out, he never com-
municated with any of his friends, eXCepting his
brother, and the fact of his being in residence at
New In or of his being in England at all became
known to them only when he died.”
“ Was this quite in accordance with his ordinary
habits? ” Thomdyke asked.
“ I should say not quite,” Blackmore answered.
“ My uncle was a studious, solitary man, but he
was not formerly a recluse. He was not much of
a correspondent but he kept up some sort of com-
munication with his friends. He used, for instance,
to write to me sometimes, and, when I came down
from Cambridge for the vacations, he had me to
stay with him at his rooms.”


100 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


" Is there anything known that accounts for
the change in his habits'? ”
“ Yes, there is," replied Marchmont. “ We shall
come to that presently. To proceed with the
narrative: On the ﬁfteenth of last March he was
found dead in his chambers, and a more recent will
was then discovered, dated the twelfth of November
of last year. Now no change had taken place in
the circumstances of the testator to account for the
new will, nor was there any appreciable alteration
in the disposition of the property. As far as we
can make out, the new will was drawn with the
idea of stating the intentions of the testator with
greater exactness and for the sake of doing away
with the codicil. The entire property, with the
exception of two hundred and ﬁfty pounds, was,
as before, bequeathed to Stephen, but the separate
items were speciﬁed, and the testator’s brother,
John Blackmore, was named as the executor and
residuary legatee.”
“ I see,” said Thomdyke. “ So that your client’s
interest in the will would appear to be practically
unaffected by the change.”
“ Yes. There it is,” exclaimed the lawyer,
slapping the table to add emphasis to his words.
“ That is the pity of it! If people who have no
knowledge of law would only refrain from tinker-
ing at their wills, what a world of trouble would
be saved 1 ”
“ Oh, come ! ” said Thomdyke. “ It is not for a
lawyer to say that.”
“ No, I suppose not,” Marchmont agreed. “ Only,


102s The Mystery of 31, New Inn


that there had been no communication between
her and Mr. Jeffrey since that date. Besides, if
you consider Mr. Jeffrey’s actions, you will see
that they suggest no knowledge or expectation of
this very important bequest. A man does not
make elaborate dispositions in regard to three
thousand pounds and then leave a sum of thirty
thousand to be disposed of casually as the residue
of the estate.”
“ N0,” Thomdyke agreed. “ And, as you have
said, the manifest intention of the testator was
to leave the bulk of his property to Mr. Stephen.
So we may take it as virtually certain that Mr.
Jeffrey had no knowledge of the fact that he was
a beneﬁciary under his sister’s will.”
“ Yes,” said Mr. Marchmont, “I think we may
take that as nearly certain.”
“ With reference to the second will,” said Thom-
dyke, “ I suppose there is no need to ask whether
the document itself has been examined ; I mean as
to its being a genuine document and perfectly
regular ? ”
Mr. Marchmont shook his head sadly.
“ No,” he said, “ I am sorry to say that there
can be no possible doubt as to the authenticity and
regularity of the document. The circumstances
under which it was executed establish its genuine-
ness beyond any question.”
“ What were those circumstances? ” Thomdyke
asked.
“ They were these: On the morning of the
twelfth of November last, Mr. Jeffrey came to the


Yeﬁrey Blackmore’s Will 103


porter’s lodge with a document in his hand. ‘ This,’
he said, ‘is my will. I want you to witness my
signature. Would you mind doing so, and can you
ﬁnd another respectable person to act as the second
witness ? ’ Now it happened that a nephew of the
porter’s, a painter by trade, was at work in the Inn.
The porter went out and fetched him into the lodge
and the two men agreed to witness the signature.
‘ You had better read the will,’ said Mr. Jeffrey.
‘ It is not actually necessary, but it is an additional
safeguard and there is nothing of a private nature
in the document.’ The two men accordingly read
the document, and, when Mr. Jeffrey had signed it
in their presence, they affixed their signatures ; and
I may add that the painter left the recognizable
impressions of three greasy ﬁngers.”
" And these witnesses have been examined? ”
“ Yes. They have both sworn to the document
and to their own signatures, and the painter recog-
nized his ﬁnger-marks.”
“ That,” said Thomdyke, “ seems to dispose
pretty effectually of any question as to the genuine-
ness of the will; and if, as I gather, Mr. Jeffrey
came to the lodge alone, the question of undue
inﬂuence is disposed of too.”
“ Yes,” said Mr. Marchmont. “ I think we must
pass the will as absolutely ﬂawless.”
“ It strikes me as rather odd,” said Thomdyke,
“ that Jeffrey should have known so little about
his sister’s intentions. Can you explain it, Mr.
Blackmore ? ”
“ I don’t think that it is very remarkable,"


104. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


Stephen replied. “ I knew very little of my aunt’s
affairs and I don’t think my uncle Jeffrey knew
much more, for he was under the impression that
she had only a life interest in her husband’s pro-
perty. And he may have been right. It is not
clear what money this was that she left to my uncle.
She was a very taciturn woman and made few con-
ﬁdences to anyone.”
“ So that it is possible," said Thomdyke, “ that
she, herself, may have acquired this money recently
by some bequest? ”
“ It is quite possible,” Stephen answered.
“ She died, I understand,” said Thomdyke,
glancing at the notes that he had jotted down,
“ two days before Mr. Jeffrey. What date would
that be? ”
“ Jeffrey died on the fourteenth of March,” said
Marchmont.
“ So that Mrs. Wilson died on the twelfth of
March ? ”
“ That is so,” Marchmont replied; and Thorn-
dyke then asked:
“ Did she die suddenly? ”
“ No," replied Stephen; “ she died of cancer.
I understand that it was cancer of the stomach.”
“ Do you happen to know," Thomdyke asked,
“ what sort of relations existed between Jeffrey
and his brother John? "
o “ At one time," said Stephen, “ I know they were
not very cordial; but the breach may have been
made up later, though I don’t know that it actually
was.”


Yeﬂrey Blackmore's Will I 05


“ I ask the question,” said Thorndyke, “ because,
as I dare say you have noticed, there is, in the ﬁrst
will, some hint of improved relations. As it was
originally drawn that will makes Mr. Stephen the
sole legatee. Then, a little later, a codicil is added
in favour of John, showing that Jeffrey had felt
the necessity of making some recognition of his
brother. This seems to point to some change in
the relations, and the question arises: if such a
change did actually occur, was it the beginning of
a new and further improving state of feeling
between the two brothers? Have you any facts
bearing on that question? ”
Marchmont pursed up his lips with the air of a
man considering an unwelcome suggestion, and,
after a few moments of reﬂection, answered:
“ I think we must say ‘ yes ’ to that. There is
the undeniable fact that, of all Jeffrey’s friends,
John Blackmore was the only one who knew that
he was living in New Inn.”
“ Oh, John knew that, did he? ”
“ Yes, he certainly did; for it came out in the
evidence that he had called on Jeffrey at his cham-
bers more than once. There is no denying that.
But, mark you!” Mr. Marchmont added emphat-
ically, “ that does not cover the inconsistency
of the will. There is nothing in the second will to
suggest that Jeffrey intended materially to increase
the bequest to his brother.” ’
" I quite agree with you, Marchmont. I think
that is a perfectly sound position. You have, I
suppose, fully considered the question as to whether


106 The Mystery of 31, New Inn '


it would be possible to set aside the second will
on the ground that it fails to carry out the evident
wishes and intentions of the testator? ”
“Yes. My partner, Winwood, and I went into
that question very carefully, and we also took
counsel’s opinion—Sir Horace Barnaby—and he
was of the same opinion as ourselves ; that the court
would certainly uphold the will.”
“ I think that would be my own view,” said
Thomdyke, “ especially after what you have told
me. Do I understand that John Blackmore was
the only person who knew that Jeffrey was in
residence at New Inn? ”
“The only one of his private friends. His
bankers knew and so did the ofﬁcials from whom
he drew his pension.”
“ Of course he would have to notify his bankers
of his change of address.”
“ Yes, of course. And a propos of the bank,
I may mention that the manager tells me that,
of late, they had noticed a slight change in the
character of Jeffrey’s signature—I think you will
see the reason of the change when you hear the
rest of his story. It was very triﬂing; not more
than commonly occurs when a man begins to grow
old, especially if there is some failure of eyesight."
“ Was Mr. Jeffrey’s eyesight failing? ” asked
Thomdyke.
“ Yes, it was, undoubtedly,” said Stephen. “ He
was practically blind in one eye and, in the very last
letter that I ever had from him, he mentioned that
there were signs of commencing cataractin the other.”


Yeﬂrey Blackmore, Deceased r07


“ You spoke of his pension. He continued to
draw that regularly? "
“ Yes; he drew his allowance every month, or
rather, his bankers drew it for him. They had
been accustomed to do so when he was abroad,
and the authorities seem to have allowed the prac-
tice to continue.”
Thorndyke reﬂected a while, rrmning his eye over
the notes on the slips of paper in his hand, and
Marchmont surveyed him with a malicious smile.
Presently the latter remarked:
“ Methinks the learned counsel is ﬂoored."
Thorndyke laughed. “ It seems to me,” he re-
torted, “ that your proceedings are rather like those
of the amiable individual who offered the bear a
ﬂint pebble, that he might crack it and extract the
kernel. Your confounded will seems to offer no
soft spot on which one could commence an attack.
But we won’t give up. We seem to have sucked the
will dry. Let us now have a few facts respecting
the parties concerned in it; and, as Jeffrey is the
central ﬁgure, let us begin with him and the tragedy
at New Inn that formed the starting-point of all
this trouble."
Chapter VI Yeﬁrey Blackmore, Deceased
AVING made the above proposition, Thom-
dyke placed a fresh slip of paper on the
blotting pad on his knee and looked inquirineg at
Mr. Marchmont ; who, in his turn, sighed and looked
at the bundle of documents on the table.


108 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ What do you want to know? ” he asked a little
wearily.
“ Everything,” replied Thomdyke. “ You have
hinted at circumstances that would account for a.
change in Jeffrey’s habits and that would explain
an alteration in the character of his signature. Let
us have those circumstances. And, if I might
venture on a suggestion, it would be that we take
the events in the order in which they occurred or
in which they became known.”
“ That’s the worst of you, Thomdyke,” March-
mont grumbled. " When a case has been squeezed
out to the last drop, in a legal sense, you want to
begin all over again with the family history of every
one concerned and a list of his effects and household
furniture. But I suppose you will have to be
humoured; and I imagine that the best way in
which to give you the information you want will be
to recite the circumstances surrounding the death
of Jeffrey Blackmore. Will that suit you? ”
“ Perfectly,” replied Thomdyke; and thereupon
Marchmont began:
v“ The death of Jeffrey Blackmore was discovered
at about eleven o’clock in the morning of the ﬁf-
teenth of March. It seems that a builder’s man
was ascending a ladder to examine a gutter on
number 3r, New Inn, when, on passing a second-
ﬂoor window that was open at the top, he looked in
and perceived a gentleman lying on a bed. The
gentleman was fully clothed and had apparently
lain down on the bed to rest ; at least so the builder
thought at the time, for he was merely passing the


yeﬁ'rey Blackmore, Deceased r 109


window on his way up, and, very properly, did not
make a minute examination. But when, some ten
minutes later, he came down and saw that the
gentleman was still in the same position, he looked
at him more attentively; and this is what he
noticed—but perhaps we had better have it in his
own words as he told the story at the inquest.
“ ‘ When I came to look at the gentleman a bit
more closely, it struck me that he looked rather
queer. His face looked very white, or rather pale
yellow, like parchment, and his mouth was open.
He did not seem to be breathing. On the bed by
his side was a brass object of some kind—I could
not make out what it was—and he seemed to be
holding some small metal object in his hand. I
thought it rather a queer affair, so, when I came
down I went across to the lodge and told the porter
about it. The porter came out across the square
with me and I showed him the window. Then he
told me to go up the stairs to Mr. Blackmore’s
chambers on the second pair and knock and keep on
knocking until I got an answer. I went up and
knocked and kept on knocking as loud as I could,
but, though I fetched everybody out of all the other
chambers in the house, I couldn’t get any answer
from Mr. Blackmore. So I went downstairs again
and then Mr. Walker, the porter, sent me for a
policeman.
“ ‘ I went out and met a policeman just by Dane’s
Inn and told him about the affair, and he came back
with me. He and the porter consulted together, and
then they told me to go up the ladder and get in at


110 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


the window and open the door of the chambers from
the inside. So I went up ; and as soon as I got in
at the window I saw that the gentleman was dead.
I went through the other room and opened the
outer door and let in the porter and the policeman.’
“ That,” said Mr. Marchmont, laying down the
paper containing the depositions, “is the way in
which poor Jeffrey Blackmore’s death came to be
discovered.
“ The constable reported to his inspector and the
inspector sent for the divisional surgeon, whom he
accompanied to New Inn. I need not go into the
evidence given by the police ofﬁcers, as the surgeon
saw all that they saw and his statement covers
everything that is known about Jeffrey’s death.
This is what he says, after describing how he was
sent for and arrived at the Inn :
“ ‘ In the bedroom I found the body of a man
between ﬁfty and sixty years of age, which has since
been identiﬁed in my presence as that of Mr. Jeffrey
Blackmore. It was fully dressed and wore boots on
which was a moderate amount of dry mud. It was
lying on its back on the bed, which did not appear
to have been slept in, and showed no sign of any
struggle or disturbance. The right hand loosely
grasped a hypodermic syringe containing a few
drops of clear liquid which I have since analysed
and found to be a concentrated solution of strophan-
thin.
“ ‘ On the bed, close to the left side of the body,
was a brass opium-pipe of a pattern which I believe
is made in China. The bowl of the pipe contained


Yeﬂrey Blackmore, Deceased I I I


a small quantity of charcoal, and a fragment of
opium together with some ash, and there was on
the bed a little ash which appeared to have dropped
from the bowl when the pipe fell or was laid down.
On the mantelshelf in the bedroom I found a small
glass-stoppered jar containing about an ounce of
solid opium, and another, larger jar containing wood
charcoal broken up into small fragments. Also a
bowl containing a quantity of ash with fragments
of half-burned charcoal and a few minute particles
of charred opium. By the side of the bowl were a
knife, a kind of awl or pricker and a very small pair
of tongs, which I believe to have been used for
carrying a piece of lighted charcoal to the pipe.
“ ‘ On the dressing-table Were two glass tubes
labelled “ Hypodermic Tabloids : Strophanthin 310-7;
grain,” and a minute glass mortar and pestle, of
which the former contained a few crystals which
have since been analysed by me and found to be
strophanthin.
“ ‘ On examining the body, I found that it had
been dead about twelve hours. There were no
marks of violence or any abnormal condition except-
ing a single puncture in the right thigh, apparently
made by the needle of the hypodermic syringe. The
puncture was deep and vertical in direction as if the
needle had been driven in through the clothing.
“ ‘ I made a post-mortem examination of the body
and found that death was due to poisoning by
strophanthin, which appeared to have been injected
into the thigh. The two tubes which I found on
the dressing-table would each have contained, if full,


112 . The Mystery of 31, New Inn


twenty tabloids, each tabloid representing one ﬁve-
hundredth of a grain of strophanthin. Assuming
that the whole of this quantity was injected the
amount taken would be forty ﬁve-hundredths, or
about one twelfth of a grain. The ordinary medi-
cinal dose of strophanthirr is one ﬁve-hundredth of
a grain.
“ ‘ I also found in the body appreciable traces of
morphine——the principal alkaloid of opium—from
which I infer that the deceased was a conﬁrmed
opium-smoker. This inference was supported by
the general condition of the body, which was ill-
nourished and emaciated and presented all the
appearances usually met with in the bodies of
persons addicted to the habitual use of opium.’
“ That is the evidence of the surgeon. He was
recalled later, as we shall see, but, meanwhile, I
think you will agree with me that the facts testiﬁed
to by him fully account, not only for the change
in Jeffrey’s habits—his solitary and secretive
mode of life—but also for the alteration in his
handwriting.”
“ Yes,” agreed Thomdyke, “ that seems to be
so. By the way, what did the change in the hand—
writing amount to? ”
“ Very little,” replied Marchmont. “ It was
hardly perceptible. Just a slight loss of ﬁrmness
and distinctness ; such a triﬂing change as you would
expect to ﬁnd in the handwriting of a man who
had taken to drink or drugs, or anything that might
impair the steadiness of his hand. I should not
have noticed it, myself, but, of course, the people


Yeﬂrey Blackmore, Deceased r I 3


at the bank are experts, constantly scrutinizing
signatures and scrutinizing them with a very
critical eye.”
“ Is there any other evidence that bears on the
case? ” Thorndyke asked.
Marchmont turned over the bundle of papers and
smiled grimly.
“ My dear Thorndyke,” he said, “ none of this
evidence has the slightest bearing on the case.
It is all perfectly irrelevant as far as the will is
concerned. But I know your little peculiarities
and I am indulging you, as you see, to the top of
your bent. The next evidence is that of the chief
porter, a very worthy and intelligent man named
Walker. This is what he says, after the usual
preliminaries.
“ ‘ I have viewed the body which forms the subject
of this inquiry. It is that of Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore,
the tenant of a set of chambers on the second ﬂoor-
of number thirty-one, New Inn. I have known the
deceased nearly six months, and during that time
have seen and conversed with him frequently. He
took the chambers on the second of last October and
came into residence at once. Tenants at New Inn
have to furnish tWo references. The references that
the deceased gave were his bankers and his brother,
Mr. John Blackmore. I may say that the deceased
was very well known to me. He was a quiet,
pleasant-mannered gentleman, and it was his habit
to drop in occasionally at the lodge and have a chat
with me. I went into his chambers with him once
or twice on some small matters of business and I


114 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


noticed that there were always a number of books
and papers on the table. I understood from him
that he spent most of his time indoors engaged in
study and writing. I know very little about his
way of living. He had no laundress to look after
his rooms, so I suppose he did his own house-work
and cooking ; but he told me that he took most of
.his meals outside, at restaurants or his club.
“ ‘ Deceased impressed me as a rather melancholy,
low-spirited gentleman. He was very much
troubled about his eyesight and mentioned the
matter to me on several occasions. He told me
that he was practically blind in one eye and that
the sight of the other was failing rapidly. He said
that this afﬂicted him greatly, because his only
pleasure in life was in the reading of books, and that
if he could not read he should not wish to live. On
another occasion he said that “ to a blind man life
was not worth living.”
“ ‘ On the twelfth of last November he came to the
lodge with a paper in his hand which he said was his
will ’—But I needn’t read that,” said Marchmont,
turning over the leaf, “ I’ve told you how the will
was signed and witnessed. We will pass on to the
day of poor Jeffrey’s death.
“ ‘ On the fourteenth of March,’ the porter says,
‘ at about half-past six in the evening, the deceased
came to the Inn in a four-wheeled cab. That was
the day of the great fog. I do not know if there was
anyone in the cab with the deceased, but I think
not, because he came to the lodge just before eight
o’clock and had a little talk with me. He said that


Yeﬂrey Blackmore, Deceased I I 5


he had been overtaken by the fog and could not see
at all. He was quite blind and had been obliged
to ask a stranger to call a cab for him as he could
not ﬁnd his way through the streets. He then gave
me a cheque for the rent. I reminded him that the
rent was not due until the twenty-ﬁfth, but he said
he wished to pay it now. He also gave me some
money to pay one or two small bills that were owing
to some of the tradespeople—a milk-man, a baker
and a stationer.
“ ‘ This struck me as very strange, because he
had always managed his business and paid the
tradespeople himself. He told me that the fog had
irritated his eye so that he could hardly read, and
he was afraid he should soon be quite blind. He
was very depressed; so much so that I felt quite
uneasy about him. When he left the lodge, he
went back across the square as if returning to his
chambers. There was then no gate open excepting
the main gate where the lodge is situated. That was
the last time that I saw the deceased alive.’ ”
Mr. Marchmont laid the paper on the table.
“ That is the porter’s evidence. The remaining
depositions are those of Noble, the night porter,
John Blackmore and our friend here, Mr. Stephen.
The night porter had not much to tell. This is the
substance of his evidence:
“ ‘ I have viewed the body of the deceased and
identify it as that of Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore. I
knew the deceased well by sight and occasionally
had a few words with him. I know nothing of his
habits excepting that 'he used to sit up rather late.


116 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


It is one of my duties to go round the Inn at night
and call out the hours until one o’clock in the mom-
ing. When calling out “ one o’clock ” I often saw
.a light in the sitting-room of the deceased's chambers.
On the night of the fourteenth instant, the light was
burning until past one o’clock, but it was in the
bedroom. ‘ The light in the sitting-room was out by
ten o’clock.’
“ We now come to John Blackmore’s evidence.
He says:
“ ‘ I have viewed the body of the deceased and
recognize it as that of my brother Jeffrey. I last
saw him alive on the twenty-third of February, when
I called at his chambers. He then seemed in a very
despondent state of mind and told me that his eye-
sight was fast failing. I was aware that he occa-
sionally smoked opium, but I did not know that it
was a conﬁrmed habit. I urged him, on several
occasions, to abandon the practice. I have no
reason to believe that his affairs were in any way
embarrassed or that he had any reason for making
away with himself other than his failing eyesight;
but, having regard to his state of mind when I last
saw him, I am not surprised at what has happened.’
“ That is the substance of John Blackmore’s
evidence, and, as to Mr. Stephen, his statement
merely sets forth the fact that he had identiﬁed the
body as that of his uncle Jeffrey. And now I think
you have all the facts. Is there anything more that
you want to ask me before I go,‘for I must really run
away now? ”
“ I should like," said Thomdyke, “ to know a


Yeﬁrey Blackmore, Deceased I 17


little more about the parties concerned in this affair.
But perhaps Mr. Stephen can give me the informa-
tion.”
“ I expect he cim,” said Marchmont; “ at any
rate, he knows more about them than I do; so I
will be off. If you should happen to think of any
way,” he continued, with a sly smile, “ of upsetting
that will, just let me know, and I will lose no time
in entering a caveat. Good-bye ! Don’t trouble to
let me ou .”
As soon as he was gone, Thorndyke turned to
Stephen Blackmore.
" I am going,” he said, “ to ask you a few questions
which may appear rather triﬂing, but you must
remember that my methods of inquiry concern
themselves with persons and things rather than with
documents. For instance, I have not gathered very
completely what sort of person your uncle Jeffrey
was. Could you tell me a little more about him ? ”
“ What shall I tell you ? ” Stephen asked with a
slightly embarrassed air.
“ Well, begin with his personal appearance.”
“ That is rather difficult to describe,” said
Stephen. “ He was a medium-sized man and about
ﬁve feet seven—fair, slightly grey, clean-shaved,
rather spare and slight, had grey eyes, wore spec-
tacles and stooped a little as he walked. He was
quiet and gentle in manner, rather yielding and
irresolute in character, and his health was not at
all robust though he had no inﬁrmity or disease
excepting his bad eyesight. His age was about
ﬁfty-ﬁve.”


118 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ How came he to be a civil-service pensioner at
ﬁfty-ﬁve? ” asked Thomdyke.
“ Oh, that was through an accident. He had a
nasty fall from a horse, and, being a rather nervous
man, the shock was very severe. For some time
after he was a complete wreck. But the failure of
his eyesight was the actual cause of his retirement.
It seems that the fall damaged his eyes in some way ;
in fact he practically lost the sight of one—the right
--from that moment; and, as that had been his
good eye, the accident left his vision very much
impaired. So that he was at ﬁrst given sick leave
and then allowed to retire on a pension.”
Thomdyke noted these particulars and then said:
“ Your uncle has been more than once referred to
as a man of studious habits. Does that mean that
he pursued any particular branch of learning? ”
“ Yes. He was an enthusiastic Oriental scholar.
His ofﬁcial duties had taken him at one time to
Yokohama and Tokio and at another to Bagdad,
and while at those places he gave a good deal of
attention to the languages, literature and arts of
the countries. He was also greatly interested in
Babylonian and Assyrian archaology, and I believe
he assisted for some time in the excavations at Birs
Nimroud.”
“ Indeed] ” said Thomdyke. “ This is very
interesting. I had no idea that he was a man of
such considerable attainments. The facts men-
tioned by Mr. Marchmont would hardly have led
one to think of him as what he seems to have been :
a scholar of some distinction.”


Yefrey Blackmore, Deceased I I9


“ I don’t know that Mr. Marchmont realized the
fact himself,” said Stephen ; “ or that he would have
considered it of any moment if he had. Nor, as far
as that goes, do I. But, of course, I have no experi-
ence of legal matters.”
“ You can never tell beforehand,” said Thorndyke,
“ what facts may turn out to be of moment, so that
it is best to collect all you can get. By the way,
were you aware that your uncle was an opium-
smoker ? ”
“ No, I was not. I knew that he had an opium-
pipe which he brought with him when he came
home from Japan; but I thought it was only a
curio. I remember him telling me that he once tried
a few puffs at an opium-pipe and found it rather
pleasant, though it gave him a headache. But I
had no idea he had contracted the habit ; in fact,
I may say that I was utterly astonished when the
fact came out at the inquest.”
Thorndyke made a note of this answer, too, and
said:
“ I think that is all I have to ask you about your
uncle Jeffrey. And now as to Mr. John Blackmore.
What sort of man is he P”
“ I am afraid I can’t tell you very much about
him. Until I saw him at the inquest, I had not
met him since I was a boy. But he is a very different
kind of man from Uncle Jeffrey ; different in appear-
ance and different in character.”
“ You would say that the two brothers were
Physically quite unlike, then? ”
“ Well,” said Stephen, “ I don’t know that I


120 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


ought to say that. Perhaps I am exaggerating the
difference. I am thinking of Uncle Jeffrey as he
was when I saw him last and of uncle John as he
appeared at the inquest. They were very different
then. Jeffrey was thin, pale, clean shaven, wore
spectacles and walked with a stoop. John is a
shade taller, a shade greyer, has good eyesight, a
healthy, ﬂorid complexion, a brisk, upright carriage,
is distinctly stout and wears a beard and moustache
which are black and only very slightly streaked with
grey. To me they looked as unlike as two men
could, though their features were really of the same
type; indeed, I have heard it said that, as young
men, they were rather alike, and they both resembled
their mother. But there is no doubt as to their
difference in character. Jeffrey was quiet, serious
and studious, whereas John rather inclined to what
is called a fast life ; he used to frequent race meetings,
and, I think, gambled a good deal at times.”
“ What is his profession? ”
“ That would be difﬁcult to tell ; he has so many ;
he is so very versatile. I believe he began life as an
articled pupil in the laboratory of a large brewery,
but he soon left that and went on the stage. He
seems to have remained in ‘ the profession ’ for some
years, touring about this country and making
occasional visits to America. The life seemed to
suit him and I believe he was decidedly successful
as an actor. But suddenly he left the stage and
blossomed out in connection with a bucket-shop in
London.”
“ And what is he doing now? ”


Yeﬂrey Blackmore, Deceased rzr


" At the inquest he described himself as a stock-
broker, so I presume he is still connected with the
bucket-shop.”
Thorndyke rose, and taking down from the
reference shelves a list of members of the Stock
Exchange, turned over the leaves.
“ Yes,” he said, replacing the volume, “ he must
be an outside broker. His name is not in the list of
members of ‘ the House.’ Froni what you tell me,
it is easy to understand that there should have been
no great intimacy between the two brothers, without
assuming any kind of ill-feeling. They simply had
very little in common. Do you know of anything
more ? ”
“ No. I have never heard of any actual quarrel
or disagreement. My impression that they did not
get on very well may have been, I think, due to the
terms of the will, especially the ﬁrst will. And they
certainly did not seek one anot er’s society.”
“ That is not very conclusive,” said Thorndyke.
“ As to the will, a thrifty man is not usually much
inclined to bequeath his savings to a gentleman who
may probably employ them in a merry little ﬂutter
on the turf or the Stock Exchange. And then
there was yourself ; clearly a more suitable subject
for a legacy, as your life is all before you. But this
is mere speculation and the matter is not of much
importance, as far as we can see. And now, tell me
what John Blackmore’s relations were with Mrs.
Wilsonn I gather that she left the bulk of her
property to Jeffrey, her younger brother. Is that
so ? ”


122 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ Yes. She left nothing to John. The fact is that
they were hardly on speaking terms. I believe John
had treated her rather badly, or, at any rate, she
thought he had. Mr. Wilson, her late husband,
dropped some money over an investment in connec-
tion with the bucket-shop that I spoke of, and I
think she suspected John of having let him in. She
may have been mistaken, but you know what ladies
are when they get an idea into their heads.”
“ Did you know your aunt well? ”
“ No ; very slightly. She lived down in Devon-
shire and saw very little of any of us. She was
a tacitum, strong-minded woman ; quite unlike
her brothers. She seems to have resembled her
father’s family.”
“ You might give me her full name.”
“ Julia Elizabeth Wilson. Her husband’s name
was Edmund Wilson.”
“ Thank you. There is just one more point.
What has happened to your uncle’s chambers in
New Inn since his death? ”
“ They have remained shut up. As all his
effects were left to me, I have taken over the tenancy
for the present to avoid having them disturbed. I
thought of keeping them for my own use, but I don’t
think I could live in them after what I have seen.”
“ You have inspected them, then ? ”
“ Yes ; I have just looked through them. I went
there on the day of the inquest.”
“ Now tell me : as you looked through those
rooms, what kind of impression did they convey to
you as to your uncle’s habits and mode of life? ”


yeﬂ'rey Blackmore, Deceased 123


Stephen smiled apologetically. “I am afraid,”
said he, “ that they did not convey any particular
impression in that respect. I looked into the
sitting-room and saw all his old familiar household
gods, and then I went into the bedroom and saw
the impression on the bed where his corpse had lain ;
and that gave me such a sensation of horror that I
came away at once.”
“ But the appearance of the rooms must have con-
veyedsomething to your mind,” Thorndyke urged.
“ I am afraid it did not. You see, I have not
your analytical eye. But perhaps you would like
to look through them yourself ? If you would, pray
do so. They are my chambers now.”
“ I think I should like to glance round them,”
Thorndyke replied.
“Very well,” said Stephen. “ I will give you
my card now, and I will look in at the lodge presently
and tell the porter to hand you the key whenever
you like to look over the rooms.”
He took a card from his case, and, having written
a few lines on it, handed it to Thorndyke.
" It is very good of you,” he said, “ to take so
much trouble. Like Mr. Marchmont, I have no
expectation of any result from your efforts, but I
am very‘grateful to you, all the same, for going into
the case so thoroughly. I suppose you don’t see any
possibility of upsetting that will—if I may ask the
question ? ”
" “ At present,” replied Thorndyke, “ I do not.
But until I have carefully weighed every fact con—
nected, with the case—whether it seems to have any


124 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


bearing or not—I shall refrain from expressing, or
even entertaining, an opinion either way.”
Stephen Blackmore now took his leave; and
Thomdyke, having collected the papers containing
' his notes, neatly punched a couple of holes in their
margins and inserted them into a small ﬁle, which he
slipped into his pocket.
“ That,” said he, “ is the nucleus of the body of
data on which our investigations must be based;
and I very much fear that it will not receive any
great additions. What do you think, Jervis? ”
“ The case looks about as hopeless as a case could
look,” I replied.
“ That is what I think,” said he ; “ and for that
reason I am more than ordinarily keen on making
something of it. I have not much more hope than
Marchmont has ; but I shall squeeze the case as dry
as a bone before I let go. What are you going to
do? I have to attend a meeting of the board of
directors of the Grifﬁn Life Oﬁice.”
“ Shall I walk down with you ? ”
“ It is very good of you to offer, Jervis, but I think
I will go alone. I want to run over these notes and
get the facts of the case arranged in my mind.
When I have done that, I shall be ready to pick up
new matter. Knowledge is of no use unless it is
actually in your mind, so that it can be produced
at a moment’s notice. So you had better get a book
and your pipe and spend a quiet hour by the ﬁre
while I assimilate the miscellaneous mental feast
that we have just enjoyed. And you might do a
little rumination yourself.”


The Cuneiform Inscription I 2 5


With this, Thorndyke took his departure ; and I,
adopting his advice, drew my chair closer to the ﬁre
and ﬁlled my pipe. But I did not discover any
inclination to read. The curious history that I had
just heard, and Thorndyke’s evident determination
to elucidate it further, disposed me to meditation.
Moreover, as his subordinate, it was my business to
occupy myself with his affairs. Wherefore, having
stirred the ﬁre and got my pipe well alight, I aban-
doned myself to the renewed consideration of the
facts relating to Jeffrey Blackmore’s will.
Chapter VII The Cuneiform Inscription
HE surprise which Thorndyke’s proceedings
usually occasioned, especially to lawyers, was
principally due, I think, to my friend’s habit of
vieng occurrences from an unusual standpoint.
He did not look at things quite as other men looked
at them. He had no prejudices and he knew no
conventions. When other men were cocksure,
Thorndyke was doubtful. When other men des-
paired, he entertained hopes ; and thus it happened
that he would often undertake cases that had been
rejected contemptuously by experienced lawyers,
and, what is more, would bring them to a successful
issue.
Thus it had been in the only other case in which
I had been personally associated with him—the
so-called “ Red Thumb Mark ” case. There he was
presented with an apparent impossibility; but he


The Cuneiform Inscription I 27


for the purpose of getting an opportunity to look
over the rooms himself.
I was still cogitating on the subject when my
colleague returned, followed by the watchful Polton
with the tea-tray, and I attacked him forthwith.
“ Well, Thorndyke,” I said, “ I have been thinking
about this Blackmore case while you have been
gadding about.”
“ And may I take it that the problem is solved ? "
" No, I’m hanged if you may. I can make nothing
of it.”
“ Then you are in much the same position as
I am.”
“ But, if you can make nothing of it, why did you
undertake it? ”
“ I only undertook to think about it,” said Thorn—
dyke. “ I never reject a case off-hand unless it is
obviously ﬁshy. It is surprising how difﬁculties, and
even impossibilities, dwindle if you look at them
attentively. My experience has taught me that the
most unlikely case is, at least, worth thinking over.”
“ By the way, why do you want to look over
Jeffrey’s chambers? What do you expect to ﬁnd
there ? ”
“ I have no expectations at all. I am simply
looking for stray facts.”
“ And all those questions that you asked Stephen
Blackmore; had you nothing in your mind—no
deﬁnite purpose ? ”
‘v‘ No purpose beyond getting to know as much
about the case as I can.”
“ But,” I exclaimed, “ do you mean that you are


128 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


going to examine those rooms without any deﬁnite
object at all? ”
“ I wouldn’t say that,” replied Thomdyke.
“ This is a legal case. Let me put an analogous
medical case as being more within your present
sphere. Supposing that a man should consult you,
say, about a progressive loss of weight. He can give
no explanation. He has no pain, no discomfort, no
symptoms of any kind ; in short, he feels perfectly
well in every respect ; but he is losing weight con-
tinuously. What would you do ? ”
“ I should overhaul him thoroughly,” I answered.
" Why ? What would you expect to ﬁnd? ”
“ I don’t know that I should start by expecting
to ﬁnd anything in particular. But I should over-
haul him organ by organ and function by function,
and if I could ﬁnd nothing abnormal I should have
to give it up.”
“ Exactly,” said Thomdyke. “ And that is just
my position and my line of action. Here is a
case which is perfectly regular and straightforward
excepting in one respect. It has a single abnormal
feature. And for that abnormality there is nothing
to account.
“ Jeffrey Blackmore made a will. It was a well-
drawn will and it apparently gave full effect to his
intentions. Then he revoked that will and made
another. No change had occurred in his circum-
stances or in his intentions. The provisions of the
new will were believed by him to be identical with
those of the old one. The new will differed from
the old one only in having a defect in the drafting


The Cuneiform Inscription 19.9


from which the ﬁrst will was free, and of which he
must have been unaware. Now why did he revoke
the ﬁrst will and replace it with another which he
believed to be identical in its provisions ? There is
no answer to that question. It is an abnormal
feature in the case. There must be some explana-
tion of that abnormality and it is my business to
discover it. But the facts in my possession yield
no such explanation. Therefore it is my purpose
to search for new facts which may give me a starting-
point for an investigation.”
This exposition of Thorndyke’s proposed conduct
of the case, reasonable as it was, did not impress
me as very convincing. I found myself coming
back to Marchmont’s position, that there was really
nothing in dispute. But other matters claimed our
attention at the moment, and it was not until
after dinner that my colleague reverted to the
subject.
“ How should you like to take a turn round to
New Inn this evening? ” he asked.
“ I should have thought,” said I, “ that it would
be better to go by daylight. Those old chambers
are not usually very well illuminated.”
“ That is well thought of,” said Thorndyke.
" We had better take a lamp with us. Let us go up
to the laboratory and get one from Polton.”
“ There is no need to do that,” said I. “ The
pocket-lamp that you lent me is in my overcoat
pocket. I put it there to return it to you.”
" Did you have occasion to use it ? ” he asked.
“ Yes. I paid another visit to the mysterious
5


130 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


house and carried out your plan. I must tell you
about it later.”
“ Do. I shall be keenly interested to hear all
about your adventures. Is there plenty of candle
left in the lamp?”
“ Oh yes. I only used it for about an hour.”
“ Then let us be off,” said Thomdyke; and
we accordingly set forth on our quest ; and, as we
went, I reﬂected once more on the apparent vague-
ness of our proceedings. Presently I reopened the
subject with Thomdyke.
“ I can’t imagine,” said I, “ that you have
absolutely nothing in view. That you are going to
this place with no deﬁned purpose whatever.”
“ I did not say exactly that,” replied Thomdyke.
“ I said that I was not going to look for any
particular thing or fact. I am going in the hope
that I may observe something that may start
a new train of speculation. But that is not all.
You know that an investigation follows acertain
logical course. It begins with the observation of
the conspicuous facts. We have done that. The
facts were supplied by Marchmont. The next stage
is to propose to oneself one or more provisional
explanations or hypotheses. We have done that,
too—~0r, at least I have, and I suppose you
have.”
“ I haven’t,” said I. " There is Jeffrey’s will, but
why he should have made the change I cannot form
the foggiest idea. But I should like to hear your
provisional theories on the subject.” _
“ You won’t hear them at present. They are


The Cuneiform InscriPtion 131


mere wild conjectures. But to resume : what do we
do next ? ”
“ Go to New Inn and rake over the deceased
gentleman’s apartments.”
Thorndyke smilingly ignored my answer and
continued-—
“ We examine each explanation in turn and see
what follows from it ; whether it agrees with all the
facts and leads to the discovery of new ones, or,
on the other hand, disagrees with some facts or
leads us to an absurdity. Let us take a simple
example.
“ Suppose we ﬁnd scattered over a ﬁeld a number
of largish masses of stone, which are entirely different
in character from the rocks found in the neighbour-
hood. The question arises, how did those stones get
into that ﬁeld? Three explanations are proposed.
One : that they are the products of former volcanic
action; two: that they were brought from a
distance by human agency ; three : that they were
carried thither from some distant country by ice-
bergs. Now each of those explanations involves
certain consequences. If the stones are volcanic,
then they were once in a state of fusion. But we
ﬁnd that they are unaltered limestone and contain
fossils. Then they are not volcanic. If they were
borne by icebergs, then they were once part of a
glacier and some of them will probably show the
ﬂat surfaces with parallel scratches which are found
on glacier-borne stones. We examine them and
ﬁnd the characteristic scratched smfaces. Then
they have probably been brought to this place by


132 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


icebergs. But this does not exclude human agency,
for they might have been brought by men to this
place from some other where the icebergs had
deposited them. A further comparison with other
facts would be needed.
“ So we proceed in cases like this present one.
Of the facts that are known to us we invent certain
explanations. From each of those explanations we
deduce consequences; and if those consequences
agree with new facts, they conﬁrm the explanation,
whereas if they disagree they tend to disprove it.
But here we are at our destination.”
We turned out of Wych Street into the arched
passage leading into New Inn, and, halting at the
half-door of the lodge, 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, and we
accordingly waited for his paroxysm to subside.
At length he turned towards us, wiping his eyes, and
inquired our business.
“ Mr. Stephen Blackmore,” said Thomdyke,
“ has given me permission to look over his chambers.
He said that he would mention the matter to you.”
" So he has, sir," said the porter; “ but he has
just taken the key himself to go to the chambers.
If you walk across the Inn you’ll ﬁnd him there;
it’s on the farther side ; number thirty-one, second
ﬂoor.”
We made our way across to the house indicated,
the ground ﬂoor of which was occupied by .a sOIiCitor’s
ofﬁces and was distinguished by a good-sized brass


The Cuneiform Inscription 133


plate. Although it had now been dark some time
there was no light on the lower stairs, but we
encountered on the ﬁrst-ﬂoor landing a man who
had just lit the lamp there. Thorndyke halted to
address him.
“ Can you tell me who occupies the chambers on
the third ﬂoor? ”
“ The third ﬂoor has been empty about three
months,” was the reply.
“ We are going up to look 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 cemetery for the deaf and dumb.
There’s the solicitors on the ground ﬂoor and the
architects on the ﬁrst ﬂoor. They both clear out
about six, and when they’re gone the ’ouse is as
empty as a blown hegg. I don’t wonder poor Mr.
Blackmore made away with his-self. Livin’ up
there all alone, it must have been like Robinson
Crusoe without no man Friday and not even a
blooming goat to talk to. Quiet! It’s quiet
enough, if that’s what you want. Wouldn’t be no
good to me.”
With a contemptuous shake of the head, he turned
and retired down the next ﬂight, and, as the echoes
of his footsteps died away we resumed our ascent.
“ So it would appear,” Thorndyke commented,
“ that when Jeffrey Blackmore came home that last
evening, the house was empty.”
Arrived on the second-ﬂoor landing, we were con-
fronted by a solid-looking door on the lintel of which


134 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


the deceased man’s name was painted in white
lettering which still looked new and fresh. Thom-
dyke knocked at the door, which was at once opened
by Stephen Blackmore.
“ I haven’t wasted any time before taking advan—
tage of your permission, you see,” my colleague said
as we entered.
“ No, indeed,” said Stephen ; “ you are very
prompt. I have been rather wondering what kind
of information you expect to gather from an inspec—
tion of these rooms.”
Thomdyke smiled genially, amused, no doubt, by
the similarity of Stephen’s remarks to those of mine
which he had so recently criticized.
“ A man of science, Mr. Blackmore,” he said,
“ expects nothing. He collects facts and keeps an
open mind. As to me, I am a mere legal Autolycus,
a snapper-up of unconsidered triﬂes of evidence.
When I have accumulated a few facts, I arrange
them, compare them and think about them. Some-
times the comparison yields new matter and some-
times it doesn’t ; but in any case, believe me, it is a
capital error to decide beforehand what data are to
be sought for.”
“ Yes, I suppose that is so,” said Stephen;
“ though, to me, it almost looks as if Mr. March-
mont was right ; that there is nothing to investigate.”
“ You should have thought of that before you
consulted me,” laughed Thomdyke. “ As it is, I
am engaged to look into the case and I shall do so ;
and, as I have said, I shall keep an open mind until
I have all the facts in my possession.”


The Cuneiform Inscription I 3 5

He glanced round the sitting-room, which we had
now entered, and continued:
“ These are ﬁne, digniﬁed old rooms. It seems a
sin to have covered up all this oak panelling and
that carved cornice and mantel with paint. Think
what it must have been like when the beautiful
ﬁgured wood was exposed.”
“ It would be very dark,” Stephen observed.
“ Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “ and I suppose we
care more for light and less for beauty than our
ancestors did. But now, tell me; looking round
these rooms, do they convey to you a similar impres-
sion to that which the old rooms did? Have they
the same general character? "
“ Not quite, I think. Of course the rooms in
Jermyn Street were in a different kind of house,
but beyond that, I seem to feel a certain difference ;
which is rather odd, seeing that the furniture is the
same. But the old rooms were more cosy, more
homelike. I ﬁnd something rather bare and cheer-
less, I was almost going to say squalid, in the look
of these chambers.”
“ That is rather what I should have expected,"
said Thorndyke. “ The opium habit alters a man’s
character profoundly; and, somehow, apart from
the mere furnishing, a room reﬂects in some subtle
way, but very distinctly, the personality of its
occupant, especially when that occupant lives a
solitary life. Do you see any evidences of the
activities that used to occupy your uncle? ”
‘“ Not very much,” replied Stephen. “ But the
place may not be quite as he left it. I found one


r 36 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


or two of his books on the table and put them back
in the shelves, but I found no manuscript or notes
such as he used to make. I noticed, too, that his
ink-slab which he used to keep so scrupulously clean
is covered with dry smears and that the stick of ink
is all cracked at the end, as if he had not used it for
months. It seems to point to a great change in his
habits.”
“ What used he to do with Chinese ink? ” Thom-
dyke asked.
“ He corresponded with some of his native friends
in Japan, and he used to write in the Japanese
character even if they understood English. That
was what he chieﬂy used the Chinese ink for. But
he also used to copy the inscriptions from these
things.” Here Stephen lifted from the mantel-
piece what looked like a fossil Bath bun, but was
actually a clay tablet covered with minute indented
writing.
“ Your uncle could read the cuneiform character,
then ? ”
“ Yes; he was something of an expert. These
tablets are, I believe, leases and other legal docu-
ments from Eridu and other Babylonian cities.
He used to copy the inscriptions in the cuneiform
writing and then translate them into English. 3 But
I mustn’t stay here any longer as I have an engage-
ment for this evening. I just dropped in to get
these two volumes—Thornton’s History of Babylonia,
which he once advised me to read. Shall I give you
the key? You’d better have it and leave it with
the porter as you go out.”


The Cuneiform Inscription r37


He shook hands with us and we walked out with
him to the landing and stood watching him as he
ran down the stairs. Glancing at Thorndyke by
the light of the gas lamp on the landing, I thought I
detected in his impassive face that almost imper-
ceptible change of expression to which I have already
alluded as indicating pleasure or satisfaction.
“ You are looking quite pleased with yourself,”
I remarked.
“ I am not displeased,” he replied calmly.
“ Autolycus has picked up a few crumbs; very
small ones, but still crumbs. No doubt his learned
junior has picked up a few likewise ? ”
I shook my head—and inwardly suspected it of
being rather a thick head.
“ I did not perceive anything in the least degree
signiﬁcant in what Stephen was telling you,” said I.
“ It was all very interesting, but it did not seem to
have any bearing on his uncle’s will.”
“ I was not referring only to what Stephen has
told us, although that was, as you say, very interest-
ing. While he was talking I was looking about the
room, and I have seen a very strange thing. Let me
show it to you.”
He linked his arm in mine and, walking me back
into the room, halted opposite the ﬁre-place.
“ There,” said he, “ look at that. It is a most
remarkable object.”
I followed the direction of his gaze and saw an
oblong frame enclosing a large photograph of an
inscription in the weird and cabalistic arrow-head
character. I looked at it in silence for some


138 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


seconds and then, somewhat disappointed, remarked:
“ I don’t see anything very remarkable in it,
under the circumstances. In any ordinary room
it would be, I admit; but Stephen has just told
us that his uncle was something of an expert in
cuneiform writing.”
“ Exactly,” said Thomdyke. “ That is my point.
That is what makes it so remarkable.”
“ I don’t follow you at all,” said I. “ That a
man should hang upon his wall an inscription that
is legible to him does not seem to me at all out of the
way. It would be much more singular if he should
hang up an inscription that he could not read.”
“ No doubt,” replied Thomdyke. “ But you will
agree with me that it would be still more singular
if a man should hang upon his wall an inscription
that he could read—and hang it upside down.”
I stared at Thomdyke in amazement.
“ Do you mean to tell me,” I exclaimed, “ that
that photograph is really upside down? ”
“ I do indeed,” he replied.
“ But how do you know? Have we here yet
another Oriental scholar? ”
Thomdyke chuckled. “ Some fool,” he replied,
“ has said that ‘ a little knowledge is a dangerous
thing.’ Compared with much knowledge, it may
be ; but it is a vast deal better than no knowledge.
Here is a case in point. I have read with very keen
interest the wonderful history of the decipherment
of the cuneiform writing, and I happen to recollect
one or two of the main facts that seemed to me to be
worth remembering. This particular inscription is


14.0
The Mystery of 31, New Inn

.ZOHHMHMUMZH QﬂHMﬂ>ZH Him...


q 3 Mfumxmm.’ Ssmﬂxﬁﬁﬂ. at. I

Lira. 1. , ages: . as. , as .m a.

a is? a. x a . .2. réaa. s. E. a. . a ,

weakness ":1: é?smwmzalm. w an? .

Hives... w. r . AX.AA:.34=.K.TJA1A.3. Av. / . AuA.


3. .r ﬂ . .5. .3. K2371. weer/.32 . Q. X .Am . AA .


’11, Ulllt (llﬂmlﬂ'llllllllmlllﬂlllII(Illlllllllﬂl("Klllﬂtﬂﬂv.


gin


The Cuneiform Inscription I41


“ J. Budge, Frame-maker and Gilder, I6, Gt. Anne
Street, W.C.”
“ Well? ” I said, when I had read the label
without gathering from it anything fresh.
“ The label, you observe, is the right way up as
it hangs .on the wall.” ’
“ 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 Jeffrey never
noticed the mistake? ”
“ That is a perfectly sound explanation,” said
Thorndyke. “ But I think there is something
more. 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 that they cover will be clean and new-looking.”
He drew from his pocket a “ combination ” knife
containing, among other implements, ascrew-driver,
with which be 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.”
" And what are we to infer from that ? "


14.2 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ 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 then ?
What inference does that lead to? ”
Thorndyke reﬂected for a few moments and I
continued :
“ It is evident that this photograph suggests more
to you than it does to me. I should like to hear your
exposition of its bearing on the case, if it has any.”
“ Whether or no it has any real bearing on the
case,” Thorndyke answered, “ it is impossible for
me to say at this stage. I told you that I had pro-
posed to myself one or two hypotheses to account
for and explain Jeffrey Blackmore’s will, and I may
say that the curious misplacement of this photo-
graph ﬁts more than one of them. I won’t say more
than that, because I think it would be proﬁtable to
you to work at this case independently. You have
all the facts that I have and you shall have a copy
of my notes of Marchmont’s statement of the case.
With this material you ought to be able to reach
some conclusion. Of course neither of us may be
able to make anything of the case—it doesn’t look
very hopeful at present—but whatever happens, we
can compare notes after the event and you will be
the richer by so much experience of actual investiga-
tion. But I will start you off with one hint, which
is this: that neither you nor Marchmont seem to
appreciate in the least the very extraordinary nature
of the facts that he communicated to us.”


The Cuneiform Inscription I 4 3


“ I thought Marchmont seemed pretty much alive
to the fact that it was a very queer will.”
“ So he did,” agreed Thorndyke. “ But that is
not quite what I mean. The whole set of circum—
stances, taken together and in relation to one
another, impressed me as most remarkable; and
that is why I am giving so much attention to what
looks at ﬁrst sight like such a very unpromising case.
Copy out my notes, Jervis, and examine the facts
critically. I think you will see what I mean. And
now let us proceed.”
He replaced the brass plate and having reinserted
the screws, hung up the frame, and proceeded to
browse slowly round the room, stopping now and
again to inspect the Japanese colour-prints and
framed photographs of buildings and other objects
of archaological interest that formed the only
attempts at wall-decoration. To one of the former
he drew my attention.
“ These things are of some value,” he remarked.
“ Here is one by Utamaro—that little circle with the
mark over it is his signature—and you notice that
the paper is becoming spotted in places with mildew.
The fact is worth noting in more than one con-
nection.”
I accordingly made a mental note and the peram-
bulation continued.
“ You observe that Jeffrey used a gas-stove,
instead of a coal ﬁre, no doubt to economize work,
but perhaps for other ' reasons. Presumably he
cooked by gas, too ; let us see.”
We wandered into the little cupboard-like kitchen


144. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


and glanced round. A ring-bumer on a shelf, a
kettle, a frying-pan and a few pieces of crockery
were its sole appointments. Apparently the porter
was correct in his statement as to Jeffrey’s habits.
Returning to the sitting-room, Thomdyke resumed
his inspection, pulling out the table drawers, peering
inquisitiver into cupboards and bestowing a passing
glance on each of the comparatively few objects that
the comfortless room contained.
“ I have never seen a more characterless apart-
ment,” was his ﬁnal comment. “ There is nothing
that seems to suggest any kind of habitual activity
on the part of the occupant. Let us look at the
bedroom.”
We passed through into the chamber of tragic
memories, and, when Thomdyke had lit the gas,
we stood awhile looking about us in silence. It
was a bare, comfortless room, dirty, neglected and
squalid. The bed appeared not to have been
remade since the catastrophe, for an indentation
still marked the place where the corpse had lain,-
and even a slight powdering of ash could still be
seen on the shabby counterpane. It looked to me
a typical opium-smoker’s bedroom.
“ Well,” Thomdyke remarked at length, “ there
is character enough here—of a kind. Jeffrey
Blackmore would seem to have been a man of few
needs. One could hardly imagine a bedroom in
which less attention seemed to have been given to
the comfort of the occupant.”
He looked about him keenly and continued:
“ The syringe and the rest of the lethal appliances


146 The Mystery of 31, New Inn *


what seemed to me much more interest than was
deserved by so commonplace an object.
“ The cards, you observe,” said he, “ are printed
from type, not from a plate. I would note that
fact. And tell me what you make of tha ."
He handed me the pencil, which I examined with
concentrated attention, helping myself even with the
lamp and my pocket lens. But even with these aids
I failed to discover anything unusual in its appear-
ance. Thomdyke watched me with a mischievous
smile, and, when I had ﬁnished, inquired:
“ Well; what is it? ”
“ Confound you I ” I exclaimed. “ It’s a pencil.
Any fool can see that, and this particular fool can’t
see any more. It’s a wretched stump of a pencil,
villainoust cut to an abominably bad point. It is
coloured dark red on the outside and was stamped
with some name that began with C—O—Co-opera-
tive Stores, perhaps.”
“ Now, my dear Jervis,” Thomdyke protested,
“ don’t begin by confusing speculation with fact.
The letters which remain are 0—0. Note that fact
and ﬁnd out what pencils there are which have
inscriptions beginning with those letters. I am not
going to help you, because you can easily do this for
yourself. And it will be good discipline even if the
fact turns out to mean nothing.”
At this moment he stepped back suddenly, and,
looking down at the ﬂoor, said:
, “ Give me the lamp, Jervis. I’ve trodden on
something that felt like glass.”
I brought the lamp to the place where he had been


The Cuneiform Inscription I47


standing, close by the bed, and we both knelt on
the ﬂoor, throwing the light of the lamp on the bare
and dusty boards. Under the bed, just within reach
of the foot of a person standing close by, was a little
patch of fragments of glass. Thorndyke produced
a piece of paper from his pocket and delicately swept
the little fragments on to it, remarking :
“ By the look of things, I am not the ﬁrst person
who has trodden on that object, whatever it is. Do
you mind holding the lamp while I inspect the
remains ? ”
I took the lamp and held it over the paper while
he examined the little heap of glass through his lens.
“ Well,” I asked. “ What have you found? ”
“ That is what I am asking myself,” he replied.
" As far as I can judge by the appearance of these
fragments, they appear to be portions of a small
watch-glass. I wish there were some larger pieces.”
“ Perhaps there are,” said I. “ Let us look about
the ﬂoor under the bed.”
We resumed our groping about the dirty ﬂoor,
throwing the light of the lamp on one spot after
another. Presently, as we moved the lamp about,
its light fell on a small glass bead, which I instantly
picked up and exhibited to Thorndyke.
“ Is this of any interest to you? ” I asked.
Thorndyke took the bead and examined it
curiously. \
“ It is certainly,” he said, " a very odd thing to
ﬁnd in the bedroom of an old bachelor like Jeffrey,
especially as we know that he employed no woman
to look after his rooms. Of course, it may be a


148 The Mystery af 31, New Inn


relic of the last tenant. Let us see if there are any
more.”
We renewed our search, crawling under the bed
and throwing the light of the lamp in all directions
over the ﬂoor. The result was the discovery of
three more beads, one entire bugle and the crushed
remains of another, which had apparently been
trodden on. All of these, including the fragments of
the bugle that had been crushed, Thomdyke placed
carefully on the paper, which he laid on the dressing-
table the more conveniently to examine our ﬁnd.
“ I am sorry,” said he, “ that there are no more
fragments of the watch-glass, or whatever it was.
The broken pieces were evidently picked up, with
the exception of the one that I trod on, which was
an isolated fragment that had been overlooked.
As to the beads, judging by their number and the
position in which we found some of them—that
crushed bugle, for instance—they must have been
dropped during Jeffrey’s tenancy and probably quite
recently.”
“ What sort of garment do you Suppose they
came from? ” I asked.
“ They may have been part of a beaded veil or
the trimming of a dress, but the grouping rather
suggests to me a tag of bead fringe. The colour is
rather unusual.”
" I thought they looked like black beads.”
“ SO they do by this light, but I think that by
daylight we shall ﬁnd them to be a dark, reddish-
brown. You can see the colour now if you look at
the smaller fragments of the one that is crushed."
_ /


The Cuneiform Inscription I49


He handed me his lens, and, when I had veriﬁed
his statement, he produced from his pocket a small
tin box with a closely-ﬁtting lid in which he
deposited the paper, having ﬁrst folded it up into a
small parcel.
“ We will put the pencil in too,” said he; and,
as he returned the box to his pocket he added:
“ you had better get one of these little boxes from
Polton. If is often useful to have a safe receptacle
for small and fragile articles.”
He folded up and replaced the dead man’s clothes
as we had found them. Then, observing a pair
of shoes standing by the wall, he picked them up
and looked them over thoughtfully, paying special
attention to the backs of the soles and the fronts of
the heels.
“_ I suppose we may take it,” said he, “ that these
are the shoes that poor Jeffrey wore on the night of
his death. At any rate there seem to be no others.
He seems to have been a fairly clean walker. The
streets were shockingly dirty that day, as I remem-
ber most distinctly. Do you see any slippers ?
I haven’t noticed any.”
He opened and peeped into a cupboard in which
an overcoat surmounted by a felt hat hung from a
peg like an attenuated suicide ; he looked in all
the corners and into the sitting-room, but no slippers
were to be seen.
“ Our friend seems to have had surprisingly little
regard for comfort,” Thorndyke remarked. “ Think
of spending the winter evenings in damp boots by
a gas ﬁre! ”


150 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


“ Perhaps the opium-pipe compensated,” said I;
“ or he may have gone to bed early.”
“ But he did not. The night porter used to see
the light in his rooms at one o’clock in the morning.
In the sitting-room, too, you remember. But he
seems to have been in the habit of reading in bed—
or perhaps smoking—for here is a candlestick with
the remains of a whole dynasty of candles in it. As
there is gas in the room, he couldn’t have wanted
the candle to undress by. He used stearine candles,
too; not the common parafﬁn variety. I wonder
why he went to that expense.”
“ Perhaps the smell of the paraffin candle spoiled
the aroma of the opium,” I suggested; to which
Thomdyke made no reply but continued his inspec-
tion of the room, pulling out the drawer of the
washstand—which contained a single, worn-out
nail-brush—and even picking up and examining the
dry and cracked cake of soap in the dish.
“ He seems to have had a fair amount of clothing,”
said Thomdyke, who was now going through the
chest of drawers, “ though, by the look of it, he
didn’t change very often, and the shirts have a
rather yellow and faded appearance. I wonder how
he managed about his washing. Why, here are a
couple of pairs of boots in the drawer with his
clothes ! And here is his stock of candles. Quite
a large box—though nearly empty now—of stearine
candles, six to the pound.”
He closed the drawer and cast another inquiring
look round the room.
“ I think we have seen all now, Jervis,” he said,


The Cuneiform Inscription I 51


“ unless there is anything more that you would like
to look into? ”
“ No,” I replied. “ I have seen all that I wanted
to see and more than I am able to attach any meaning
to. So we may as well go.”
I blew out the lamp and put it in my overcoat
pocket, and, when we had turned out the gas in both
rooms, we took our departure.
As we approached the lodge, we found our stout
friend in the act of retiring in favour of the night
porter. Thorndyke handed him the key of the
chambers, and, after a few sympathetic inquiries
about his health—which was obviously very in-
different—said:
“ Let me see ; you were one of the witnesses to
Mr. Blackmore’s will, I think?”
“ I was, sir,” replied the porter.
“ And I believe you read the document through
before you witnessed the signature? ”
“ I did, sir.”
“ Did you read it aloud?”
" Aloud, sirl Lor’ bless you, no, sir! Why
should I ? The other witness read it, and, of course,
Mr. Blackmore knew what was in it, seeing that it
was in his own handwriting. What should I want
to read it aloud for? ”
“ No, of course you wouldn’t want to. By the
way, I have been wondering how Mr. Blackmore
managed about his washing.”
The porter evidently regarded this question with
some disfavour, for he replied only with an interro'
gative grunt. It was, in fact, rather an odd question.


152 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ Did you get it done for him,” Thomdyke
pursued.
“ No, certainly not, sir. He got it done for
himself. The laundry people used to deliver the
basket here at the lodge, and Mr. Blackmore used
to take it in with him when he happened to be
passing.”
“ It was not delivered at his chambers, then? ”
“ No, sir. Mr. Blackmore was a very studious
gentleman and he didn’t like to be disturbed. A
studious gentleman would naturally not like to be
disturbed."
Thomdyke cordially agreed with these very
proper sentiments and ﬁnally wished the porter
“ good night.” We passed out through the gate-
way into Wych Street, and, turning our faces
eastward towards the Temple, set forth in silence,
each thinking his own thoughts. What Thorn-
dyke’s were I cannot tell, though I have no doubt
that he was busily engaged in piecing together all
that he had seen and heard and considering its
possible application to the case in hand.
As to me, my mind was in a whirl of confusion.
All this searching and examining seemed to be
the mere ﬂogging of a dead horse. The will was
obviously a perfectly valid and regular will and
there was an end of the matter. At least, so it
seemed to me. But clearly that was not Thom-
dyke’s view. His investigations were certainly
not purposeless ; and, as I walked by his side trying
to conceive some purpose in his actions, I only
became more and more mystiﬁed as I recalled them


The Track Chart 153


one by one, and perhaps most of all by the cryptic
questions that I had just heard him address to the
equally mystiﬁed porter.
Chapter VIII The Track Chart
S Thorndyke and I arrived at the main gate-
way of the Temple and he swung round into
the narrow lane, it was suddenly borne in on me
that I had made no arrangements for the night.
Events had followed one another so continuously and
each had been so engrossing that I had lost sight of
what I may call my domestic affairs.
“ We seem to be heading for your chambers,
Thorndyke,” I ventured to remark. “ It is a little
late to think of it, but I have not yet settled where‘
I am to put up to-night.”
“ My dear fellow,” he replied, “ you are going to
put up in your own bedroom which has been
waiting in readiness for you ever since you left it.
Polton went up and inspected it as soon as you
arrived. I take it that you will consider my
chambers yours until such time as you may join
the benedictine majority and set up a home for
yourself.”
“ That is very handsome of you,” said I. “ You
didn’t mention that the billet you offered was a
resident appointment.”
“ Rooms and commons included,” said Thom-
dyke ; and when I protested that I should at least
contribute to the costs of living he impatiently


154 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


waved the suggestion away. We were still arguing
the question when we reached our chambers—as
I will now call them—and a diversion was occasioned
by my taking the lamp from my pocket and placing
it on the table.
“ Ah,” my colleague remarked, “ that is a little
reminder. We will put it on the mantelpiece for
Polton to collect and you shall give me a full account
of your further adventures in the wilds of Kenning-
ton. That was a very odd affair. I have often
wondered how it ended.”
He drew our two arm-chairs up to the ﬁre, put
on some more coal, placed the tobacco jar on the
table exactly equidistant from the two chairs, and
settled himself with the air of a man who is antici-
pating an agreeable entertainment.
I ﬁlled my pipe, and, taking up the thread of the
story where I had broken off on the last occasion,
began to outline my later experiences. But he
brought me up short.
“ Don’t be sketchy, Jervis. To be sketchy is
to be vague. Detail, my child, detail is the soul
of induction. Let us have all the facts. We can
sort them out afterwards.”
I began afresh in a vein of the extremest cir-
cumstantiality. With deliberate malice I loaded
a prolix narrative with every triviality that afairly
retentive memory could rake out of the half-for-
gotten past. I cudgelled my brains for irrelevant
incidents. I described with the minutest accuracy
things that had not the faintest signiﬁcance. I
drew a vivid picture of the carriage inside and out ;


The Track Chart I 55


I painted a lifelike portrait of the horse, even going
into particulars of the harness—which I was sur-
prised to ﬁnd that I had noticed. I described the
furniture of the dining-room and the cobwebs that
had hung from the ceiling; the auction-ticket on
the chest of drawers, the rickety table and the
melancholy chairs. I gave the number per minute
of the patient’s respirations and the exact quantity
of coffee consumed on each occasion, with an ex-
haustive description of the cup from which it was
taken ; and I left no personal details unconsidered,
from the patient’s ﬁnger-nails to the roseate pimples
on Mr. Weiss’s nose.
But my tactics of studied prolixity were a com-
plete failure. The attempt to fatigue Thomdyke’s
brain with superabundant detail was like trying
to surfeit a pelican with whitebait. He consumed
it all with calm enjoyment and asked for more;
and when, at last, I did really begin to think that
I had bored him a little, he staggered me by reading
over his notes and starting a brisk cross-examina-
tion to elicit fresh facts ! And the most surprising
thing of all was that when I had ﬁnished I seemed
to know a great deal more about the case than I
had ever known before.
“ It was a very remarkable affair,” he observed,
when the cross-examination was over—leaving me
somewhat in the condition of a cider-apple that has
just been removed from a hydraulic press—“ a
very suspicious affair with a highly unsatisfactory
end. I am not sure that I entirely agree with your
police ofﬁcer. Nor do I fancy that some of my


The Track Chart 157


of a fool or an ignoramus. We may criticize the
closed carriage as a tactical mistake, calculated to
arouse suspicion, but we have to weigh it against
its alternative.”
“ What is that ? ”
“ Well, consider the circumstances. Suppose
Weiss had called you in in the ordinary way. You
would still have detected the use of poison. But
now you could have located your man and made
inquiries about him in the neighbourhood. You
would probably have given the police a hint and
they would almost certainly have taken action, as
they would have had the means of identifying the
parties. The result would have been fatal to Weiss.
The closed carriage invited suspicion, but it was
a great safeguard. Weiss’s method’s were not so
unsound after all. He is a cautious man, but
cunning and very persistent. And he could be
bold on occasion. The use of the blinded carriage
was a decidedly audacious proceeding. I should
put him down as a gambler of a very discreet,
courageous and resourceful type.”
“ Which all leads to the probability that he has
pursued his scheme and brought it to a successful
issue.”
“ I am afraid it does. But—have you got your
notes of the compass-bearings? ”
“ The book is in my overcoat pocket with the
board. I will fetch them.”
I went into the ofﬁce, where our coats hung, and
brought back the notebook with the little board
to which it was still attached by the rubber band.


158 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


Thomdyke took them from me, and, opening the
book, ran his eye quickly down one page after
another. Suddenly he glanced at the clock.
“ It is a little late to begin,” said he, “ but these
notes look rather alluring. I am inclined to plot
them out at once. I fancy, from their appearance,
that they will enable us to locate the house without
much difﬁculty. But don’t let me keep you up if
you are tired. I can work them out by myself.”
“ You won’t do anything of the kind," I ex-
claimed. “ I am as keen on plotting them as you
are, and, besides, I want to see how it is done.
It seems to be a rather useful accomplishment.”
“ It is,” said Thomdyke. “ In our work, the
ability to make a rough but reliable sketch survey
is often of great value. Have you ever looked
over these notes? ”
“ No. 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, as you noticed at
the time. However, we will plot it out and then
we shall see exactly what it looks like and 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 on which was
pinned a sheet of cartridge paper.
“ Now,” said he, seating himself at the table
with the board before him, " as to the method.
You started from a known position and you arrived


’ The Track Chart I59


at a place the position of which is at present un-
known. We shall ﬁx the position of that spot by
applying two factors, the distance that you travelled
and the direction in which you were moving. The
direction is given by the compass; and, as the
horse seems to have kept up a remarkably even
pace, we can take time as representing distance.
You seem to have been travelling at about eight
miles an hour, that is, roughly, a seventh of a mile-
in one minute. So if, on our chart, we take one inch.
as representing one minute, we shall be working with
a scale of about seven inches to the mile.”
“ That doesn’t sound very exact as to distance,"
I objected.
“ It isn’t. But that doesn’t matter much. We
have certain landmarks, such as these railway
arches that you have noted, by which the actual
distance can be settled after the route is plotted.
You had better read out the entries, and, opposite
each, write a number for reference, so that we need
not confuse the chart by writing details on it. I
shall start near the middle of the board, as neither
you nor I seem to have the slightest notion what
your general direction was.” '
I laid the open notebook before me and read
out the ﬁrst entry:
" ‘ Eight ﬁfty-eight. West by South. Start from.
home. Horse thirteen hands.’ ”
“ You turned round at once, I understand,” said
Thorndyke, “ so we draw no line in that direction.
The next is—? ”
“ ‘ Eight ﬁfty-eight minutes, thirty seconds,


160 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


East by North ' ; and the next is ‘ Eight ﬁfty-nine,
North-east.’ ”
“ Then you travelled east by north about a
ﬁfteenth of a mile and we shall put down half an
inch on the chart. Then you turned north-east.
How long did you go on? ”
“ Exactly a minute. The next entry is ‘ Nine.
West north-west.’ "
“ Then you travelled about the seventh of a mile
in a north-easterly direction and we draw a line an
inch long at an angle of forty-ﬁve degrees to the
right of the north and south line. From the end of
that we carry a line at an angle of ﬁfty-six and a.
quarter degrees to the left of the north and south line,
and so on. The method is perfectly simple, you see."
“ Perfectly; I quite understand it now.”
I went back to my chair and continued to read
out the entries from the notebook while Thomdyke
laid off the lines of direction with the protractor,
taking out the distances with the dividers from a
scale of equal parts on the back of the instrument.
As the work proceeded, I noticed, from time to
time, a smile of quiet amusement spread over my
colleague’s 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 ﬁfth or sixth bridge. “ It’s like a
game of croquet. Go on. What is the next? “
I went on reading out the notes until I came to
the ﬁnal one:
“ ‘ Nine twenty-four. South-east. In covered
way. Stop. Wooden gates closed.‘ i'


The Track Chart 16!


Thorndyke ruled off the last line, remarking:
“ Then your covered way is on the south side of a
street which bears north-east. So we complete our
chart. Just look at your route, Jervis.”
He held up the board with a quizzical smile and
I stared in astonishment at the chart. The single
line, which represented the route of the carriage,
zigzagged in the most amazing manner, turning,
re-turning and crossing itself repeatedly, evidently
passing more than once down the same thorough-
fares and terminating at a comparatively short
distance from its commencement.
“ Why!” I exclaimed, the “ rascal must have
lived quite near to Stillbury’s house! ”
Thorndyke measured with the dividers the dis-
tance between the starting and arriving points of
the route and took it off from the scale.
“ F ive-eighths of a mile, roughly,” he said. “ You
could have walked it in less than ten minutes. And
now let us get out the ordnance map and see if we
can give to each of those marvelloust erratic lines
‘ a local habitation and a name.’ ”
He spread the map out on the table and placed
our chart by its side.
“ I think,” said he, “ you started from Lower
Kennington Lane? ”
“ Yes, from this point,” I replied, indicating the
spot with a pencil.
“ Then,” said Thorndyke, “ if we swing the chart
round twenty degrees to correct the deviation of the
compass, we can compare it with the ordnance map.”
He set off with the protractor an angle of twenty
s


162 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


degrees from the north and south line and turned
the chart round to that extent. After closely
scrutinizing the map and the chart and comparing
the one with the other, he said:
“ By mere inspection it seems fairly easy to
identify the thoroughfares that correspond to the
lines of the chart. Take the part that is near your
destination. At nine twenty-one you passed under
a bridge, going westward. That would seem to be
Glasshouse Street. Then you turned south, appar-
ently along the Albert Embankment, where you
heard the tug’s whistle. Then you heard a passenger
train start on your left; that would be Vauxhall
Station. Next you turned round due east and
passed under a large railway bridge, which suggests
the bridge that carries the Station over Upper
Kennington Lane. If that is so, your house should
be on the south side of Upper Kennington Lane,
some three hundred yards from the bridge. But
we may as well test our inferences by one or two
measurements.”
“ How can you do that if you don’t know the
exact scale of the chart ? ”
“ I will show you,” said Thomdyke. “ We shall
establish the true scale and that will form part of
the proof.”
, He rapidly constructed on the upper blank part
of the paper, a proportional diagram consisting
of two intersecting lines with a single cross-line.
“ This long line,” he explained, “is the distance
from Stillbury’s house to the Vauxhall railway
bridge as it appears on the chart ; the shorter cross-


The Track Chart 16 3


line is the same distance taken from the ordnance
map. If our inference is correct and the chart is


S
The Track Chart, showing the route followed by Weiss’s carriage.
A.—Starting-point in Lower Kennington Lane.
B.—Position of Mr. Weiss’s house. The dotted lines
connecting the bridges indicate probable railway lines.
reasonably accurate, all the other distances will
show a similar proportion. Let us try some of
them. Take the distance from Vauxhall bridge
to the Glasshouse Street bridge."


164. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


He made the two measurements carefully, and,
as the point of the dividers came down almost pre-
cisely in the correct place on the diagram, he looked
up at me.
“ Considering the roughness of the method by
which the chart was made, I think that is pretty
conclusive, though, if you look at the various arches
that you passed under and see how nearly they
appear to follow the position of the South-Western
Railway line, you hardly need further proof. But
I will take a few more proportional measurements
for the satisfaction of proving the case by scientiﬁc
methods before we proceed to verify our conclusions
by a visit to the spot.”
He took off one or two more distances, and on
comparing them with the proportional distances
on the ordnance map, found them in every case
as nearly correct as could be expected.
“ Yes,” said Thomdyke, laying down the dividers,
“ I think we have narrowed down the locality of
Mr. Weiss’s house to a few yards in a known street.
We shall get further help from your note of nine
twenty—three thirty, when records a patch of
newly laid macadam extending up to the
house."
“ That new macadam will be pretty well smoothed
down by now,” I objected.
“ Not so very completely,” answered Thomdyke.
“ It is only a little over a month ago, and there has
been very little wet weather since. It may be
smooth, but it will be easily distinguishable from
the old.”


The Track Chart r65


- “ And do I understand that you propose to go
and explore the neighbourhood? ”
“ Undoubtedly I do. That is to say, I intend
to convert the locality of this house into a deﬁnite
address ; which, I think, will now be perfectly easy,
unless we should have the bad luck to ﬁnd more
than one covered way. Even then, the difficulty
would be triﬂing.”
“ And when you have ascertained where Mr.
Weiss lives ? What then ? ”
“ That will depend on circumstances. I think
we shall probably call at Scotland Yard and have
a little talk with our friend Mr. Superintendent
Miller; unless, for any reason, it seems better to
look into the case ourselves.”
“ When is this voyage of exploration to take
place ? ”
Thorndyke considered this question, and, taking out
his pocket-book, glanced through his engagements.
“ It seems to me,” he said, “ that to-morrow is a
fairly free day. We could take the morning without
neglecting other business. I suggest that we start
immediately after breakfast. How will that suit
my learned friend? ”
“ My time is yours,” I replied; “ and if you
choose to waste it on matters that don’t concern
you, that’s your
“ Then we will consider the arrangement to stand
for to-morrow morning, or rather, for this morning,
as I see that it is past twelve.”
With this Thorndyke gathered up the chart and
instruments and we separated for the night.


The House of Mystery 167


regularity of surface and lighter colour, that it had
recently been re-metalled.
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.
There is no other mews or private roadway in
sight.”
He pointed to a narrow turning some dozen
yards ahead, apparently the entrace to a mews
or yard and closed by a pair of massive wooden
gates.
“ Yes,” I answered, “ there can be no doubt
that this is the place; but, by Jove l ” I added,
as we drew nearer, “ the nest is empty! Do you
see ? ”
I pointed to a bill that was stuck on the gate,
bearing, as I could see at this distance, the inscrip-
tion “ To Let.”
“ Here is a new and startling, if not altogether
unexpected development,” said Thorndyke, as
we stood gazing at the bill; which set forth that
“ these premises, including stabling and work-
shops,” were “ to be let on lease or otherwise,” and
referred inquiries to Messrs. Ryebody Brothers,
house-agents and valuers, Upper Kennington Lane.
“ The question is, should we make a few inquiries
of the agent, or should we get the keys and have
a look at the inside of the house? I am inclined
to do both, and the latter ﬁrst, if Messrs Ryebody
Brothers will trust us with the keys ”


168 The Mystery 'of 31, New Inn


We proceeded up the lane to the address given,
and, entering the oﬂice, Thomdyke made his re-
quest—somewhat to the surprise of the clerk; for
Thomdyke was not quite the kind of person whom
one naturally associates with stabling and work-
shops. However, there was no diﬂiculty, but as
the clerk sorted out the keys from a bunch hanging
from a hook, he remarked: '
“ I expect you will ﬁnd the place in a rather
dirty and neglected condition. The house has not
been cleaned yet ; it is just as it was left when the
brokers took away the furniture.”
“ Was the last tenant sold up, then? ” Thom-
dyke asked.
“ Oh, no. He had to leave rather unexpectedly
to take up some business in Germany."
“ I hope he paid his rent,” said Thomdyke.
" Oh, yes. Trust us for that. But I should
say that Mr. Weiss—that was his name—was a
man of some means. He seemed to have plenty
of money, though he always paid in notes. I don’t
fancy he had a banking account in this country.
He hadn’t been here more than about six or seven
months and I imagine he didn’t know many people
in England, as he paid us a cash deposit in lieu of
references when he ﬁrst came.“
“ I think you said his name was Weiss. It
wouldn’t be H. Weiss by any chance? ”
“ I believe it was. But I can soon tell you.”
He opened a drawer and consulted what looked
like a book of receipt forms. " Yes; H Weiss.
Do you know him, sir? ”


170 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


you mention it But it can’t be the same person.
I have only seen her a few times and then only
just for a minute or so; but I’m quite certain she
had no cast in her eye. So, you see, sir, she can’t
be the same person. You can dye your hair or
you can wear a wig or you can paint your face ; but
a squint is a squint. There’s no faking a swivel
eye.”
Thomdyke laughed softly. “ I suppose not;
unless, perhaps, some one might invent an adjust-
able glass eye. Are these the keys? ”
“ Yes, sir. The large one belongs to the wicket
in the front gate. The other is the latch-key
belonging to the side door. Mrs. Shallybang has
the key of the front door.”
“ Thank you,” said Thomdyke. He took the
keys, to which a wooden label was attached, and
we made our way back towards the house of mystery,
discussing the clerk’s statements as we went.
“ A very communicable young gentleman, that,”
Thomdyke remarked. “ He seemed quite pleased
to relieve the monotony of office work with a little
conversation. And I am sure I was very delighted
to indulge him.”
“ He hadn’t much to tell, all the same,” said I.
Thomdyke looked at me in surprise. “ I don’t
know what you would have, Jervis, unless you
expect casual strangers to present you with a
ready-made body of evidence, fully classiﬁed, with
allgathe inferences and implications stated. It
seemed to me that he was a highly instructive
young man.”


172 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


that you may have gathered from our young friend’s
remarks.”
“ What is that? "
" That a controllable squint is a very valuable
asset to a person who wishes to avoid identiﬁcation.”
“ Yes, I did note that. The fellow seemed to
think that it was absolutely conclusive.”
“ And so would most people; especially in the
case of a squint of that kind. We can all squint
towards our noses, but no normal person can turn
his eyes away from one another. My impression
is that the presence or absence, as the case might
be, of a divergent squint would be accepted as
absolute disproof of identity. But here we are.”
He inserted the key into the wicket of the large
gate, and, when we had stepped through into the
covered way, he locked it from the inside.
“ Why have you locked us in P ” I asked, seeing
that the wicket had a latch.
“ Because,” he replied, “if we now hear any
one on the premises we shall know who it is. Only
one person besides ourselves has a key.”
His reply startled me somewhat. I stopped and
looked at him.
“ That is a quaint situation, Thomdyke. I
hadn’t thought of it. Why she may actually come
- to the house while we are here; in fact, she may
be in the house at this moment.”
“ I hope not," said he. “ We don’t particularly
want Mr. Weiss to be put on his guard, for I take
it, he is a pretty wide-awake gentleman under any
circumstances. If she does come, we had better


The House of Mystery 173


keep out of sight. I think we will look over the
house ﬁrst. That is of the most interest to us.
If the lady does happen to come while we are here,
she may stay to show us over the place and keep
an eye on us. So we will leave the stables to the
last.” ‘
We walked down the entry to the side door at
which I had been admitted by Mrs. Schallibaum
on the occasion of my previous visits. Thorndyke
inserted the latch-key, and, as soon as we were
inside, shut the door and walked quickly through
into the hall, whither I followed him. He made
straight for the front door, where, having slipped up
the catch of the lock, he began very attentively to
examine the letter-box. It was a somewhat massive
wooden box, ﬁtted with a lock of good quality and
furnished with a wire grille through which one
could inspect the interior.
“ We are in luck, Jervis,” Thorndyke remarked.
“ Our visit has been most happily timed. There
is a letter in the box.”
“ Well,” I said, “ we can’t get it out ; and if we
could, it would be hardly justiﬁable.”
“ I don’t know, he replied, “ that I am prepared
to assent off-hand to either of those propositions;
but I would rather not tamper with another person’s
letter, even if that person should happen to be a
murderer. Perhaps we can get the information we
' want from the outside of the envelope.”
_ He produced from his pocket a little electric
lamp ﬁtted with a bull’s-eye, and, pressing the
button, threw a beam of light in through the grille.


174 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


The letter was lying on the bottom of the box
face upwards, so that the address could easily be
read.
“ Herrn Dr. H. Weiss,” Thomdyke read aloud.
" German stamp, postmark apparently Darmstadt.
You notice that the ‘ Herrn Dr.’ is printed and the
rest written. What do you make of that? ”
“ I don’t quite know. Do you think he is really
a medical man? ”
“ Perhaps we had better ﬁnish our investigation,
in case we are disturbed, and discuss the bearings
of the facts afterwards. The name of the sender
may be on the ﬂap of the envelope. If it is not,
I shall pick the lock and take out the letter. Have
you got a probe about you? ”
“ Yes; by force of habit I am still carrying my
pocket case.”
I took the little case from my pocket and ex-
tracting from it a jointed probe of thickish silver
wire, screwed the two halves together and handed
the completed instrument to Thomdyke; who
passed the slender rod through the grille and
adroitly turned the letter over.
“ Hal ” he exclaimed with deep satisfaction,
as the light fell on the reverse of the envelope, “ we
are saved from the necessity of theft—or rather,
unauthorized borrowing —- ‘ Johann Schnitzler,
Darmstadt.’ That is all that we actually want.
The German police can do the rest if necessary.”
He handed me back my probe, pocketed his
lamp, released the catch of the lock on the door, and
turned away along the dark, musty-smelling hall.


The House of Mystery \ I7 5


“ Do you happen to know the name of Johann
Schnitzler? ” he asked.
I replied that I had no recollection of ever having
heard the name before.
“ Neither have I,” said he; “ but I think we
may form a pretty shrewd guess as to his avocation.
As you saw, the words ' Herm Dr.’ were printed
on the envelope, leaving the rest of the address
to be written by hand. The plain inference is that
he is a person who habitually addresses letters to
medical men, and as the style of the envelope and
the lettering—which is printed, not embossed—is
commercial, we may assume that he is engaged in
some sort of trade. Now, what is a likely trade ? ”
“ He might be an instrument maker or a drug
manufacturer; more probably the latter, as there
is an extensive drug and chemical industry in
Germany, and as Mr. Weiss seemed to have more
use for drugs than instruments.”
“ Yes, I think you are right; but we will look
him up when we get home. And now we had better
take a glance at the bedroom; that is, if you can
remember which room it was.”
“ It was on the ﬁrst ﬂoor,” said I, “ and the door
by which I entered 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? ”


176 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


He pointed to a spot near the bottom of the door
where, on close inspection, four good-sized screw-
holes were distinguishable. They had been neatly
stopped with putty and covered with knotting,
and were so nearly the colour of the grained and
varnished woodwork as to be hardly visible.
“ Evidently,” I answered, “ there has been a
bolt there, though it seems a queer place to ﬁx one.”
“ Not at all,” replied Thomdyke. “ 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 points that strike one. First, you
will notice that the bolts have been ﬁxed on quite
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, which
have been so skilfully and carefully stopped, would
be less conspicuous.
“ Then, they are on the outside of the door—an
unusual situation for bedroom bolts—and were of
considerable size. They were long and thic .”
“ I can see, by the position of the screw-holes,
that they were long; but how do you arrive at
their thickness? ”
“ By the size of the counter-holes in the jamb of
the door. These holes have been very carefully
ﬁlled with wooden plugs covered with knotting;


The House of Mystery 177


but you can make out their diameter, which is
that of the bolts, and which is decidedly out of
proportion for an ordinary bedroom door. Let me
show you a light.”
He ﬂashed his lamp into the dark comer, and I
was able to see distinctly the portentously large
holes into which the bolts had ﬁtted, and also to
note the remarkable neatness with which they had
been plugged. ,
“ 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, and that these bolts had been
of the same very substantial character as the
others.
Thorndyke turned away from the door with a
slight frown.
“ If we had any doubts,” said he, “ as to what
has been going on in this house, these traces of
massive fastenings would be almost enough to
settle them.”
“ They might have been there before Weiss
came,” I suggested. “ He only came about seven
months ago and there is no date on the screw-holes.”
“ That is quite true. But when, with their
recent ﬁxture, you couple the facts that they have
been removed, that very careful measures have
been taken to obliterate the traces of their presence,
and that they would have been indispensable for


178 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


the commission of the crime that we are almost
certain was being committed here, it looks like an
excess of caution to seek other explanations.”
“ But,” I objected, “ if the man, Graves, was
really imprisoned, could not he have smashed the
window and called for help? ”
“ The window looks out on the yard, as you see ;
but I expect it was secured too.”
He drew the massive, old-fashioned shutters out
of their recess and closed them.
“ Yes, here we are.” He pointed to four groups
of screw-holes at the corners of the shutters, and,
once more producing his lamp, 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. When
these bars were ﬁxed and padlocked and the bolts
were shot, this room was as secure, for a prisoner
unprovided with tools, as a cell in Newgate.”
We looked at one another for awhile without
speaking; and I fancy that if Mr. H. Weiss could
have seen our faces he might have thought it desir-
able to seek some retreat even more remote than
Hamburg.
“ It was a diabolical affair, Jervis,” Thomdyke
said at length, in an ominously quiet and even
gentle tone. “ A sordid, callous, cold-blooded
crime of a type that is to me utterly unforgivable


T he House of Mystery 179


and incapable of extenuation. Of course, it may
have failed. Mr. Graves may even now be alive.
I shall make it my very especial business to ascer-
tain whether he is or not. And if he is not, I shall
take it to myself as a sacred duty to lay my hand
on the man who has compassed his death.”
I looked at Thorndyke with something akin to awe.
In the quiet unemotional tone of his voice, in his
unruﬂled manner and the stony calm of his face,
there was something much more impressive, more
fateful, than there could have been in the ﬁercest
threats or the most passionate denunciations. I
felt that in those softly spoken words he had pro-
nounced the doom of the fugitive villain.
He turned away from the window and glanced
round the empty room. It seemed that our dis-
covery of the fastenings had exhausted the informa-
tion that it had to offer.
“ It is a thousand pities,” I remarked, “ that
we were unable to look round before they moved
out the furniture. We might have found some
clue to the scoundrel’s identity.”
“ Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “ there isn’t much
information to be gathered here, I am afraid. I
see they have swept up the small litter from the
ﬂoor and poked it under the grate. We will turn
that over, as there seems to be nothing else, and
then look at the other rooms.”
He raked out the little heap of rubbish with 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


The House of Mystery 181


glass; that is quite evident. Then these will
have belonged to your patient, Jervis. You said
that the tremulous iris was in the right eye, I
think ? ”
“ Yes,” I replied. " These will be his spectacles,
without doubt.”
“ They are peculiar frames,” he continued. “ If
they were made in this country, we might be able
to discover the maker. But we must collect as
many fragments of glass as we can.”
Once more we searched amongst the rubbish and
succeeded, eventually, in recovering some seven
or eight small fragments of the broken spectacle-
glasses, which Thorndyke laid on the mantelshelf
beside the little sticks.
“ By the way, Thorndyke,” I said, taking up
the latter to examine them afresh, “ what are these
things? Can you make anything of them? ”
He looked at them thoughtfully for a few moments
and then replied:
“ I don’t think I will tell you what they are.
You should ﬁnd that out for yourself, and it will
be well worth your while to do so. They are
rather suggestive objects under the circumstances.
But notice their peculiarities carefully. Both are
portions of some smooth, stout reed. There is a
long, thin stick—about six inches long—and a
thicker piece only three inches in length. The
longer piece has a little scrap of red paper stuck
on at the end; apparently a portion of a label of
some kind with an ornamental border. The other
end of the stick has been broken off. The shorter,


182 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


stouter stick has had its central cavity artiﬁcially
enlarged so that it ﬁts over the other to form a cap
or sheath. Make a careful note of those facts and
try to think what they probably mean ; what would
be the most likely use for an object of this kind.
When you have ascertained that, you will have
learned something new about this case. And now,
to resume our investigations. Here is a very sugges-
tive thing.” He picked up a small, wide-mouthed
bottle and, holding it up for my inspection, con-
tinued : “ Observe the ﬂy sticking to the inside, and
the name on the label, ‘ Fox, Russell Street, Covent
Garden.’ ”
“ I don’t know Mr. Fox.”
“ Then I will inform you that he is a dealer in
the materials for ‘ make-up,’ theatrical or other-
wise, and will leave you to consider the bearing of
this bottle on our present investigation. There
doesn’t seem to be anything else of interest in this
El Dorado excepting that screw, which you notice
is about the size of those with which the bolts
were fastened on the doors. I don’t think it is
worthwhile to unstop any of the holes to try it;
we should learn nothing fresh.”
If He rose, and, having kicked the discarded rubbish
back under the grate, gathered up his gleanings
from the mantelpiece, carefully bestowing the spec-
tacles and the fragments of glass in the tin box that
he appeared always to carry in his pocket, and
wrapping the larger objects in his handkerchief.
“ A poor collection,” was his comment, as he
returned the box and handkerchief to his pocket,


184. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


take it that the fear of you drove them out of the
neighbourhood, and that they are mighty anxious
to get that letter and cut the last link that binds
them to this house.”
“ I suppose that is so,” I agreed; “ and if the
lady should happen to pass this way and should
see me at the window and recognize me, she would
certainly smell a rat.”
“ A rat 1 ” exclaimed Thomdyke. “ She would
smell a whole pack of foxes, and Mr. H. Weiss would
be more on his guard than ever. Let us have a
look at the other rooms ; there is nothing here.”
We went up to the next ﬂoor and found traces
of recent occupation in one room only. The
garrets had evidently been unused, and the kitchen
and ground-ﬂoor rooms offered nothing that
appeared to Thomdyke worth noting. Then we
went out by the side door and down the covered
way into the yard at the back. The workshops
were fastened with rusty padlocks that looked as
if they had not been disturbed for months. The
stables were empty and had been tentatively
cleaned out, the coach-house was vacant, and pre-
sented no traces of recent use excepting a half-bald
spoke-brush. We returned up the covered way
and I was about to close the side door, which Thorn-
dyke had left ajar, when he stopped me.
“ We’ll have another look at the hall before we
go,” said he; and, walking softly before me, he
made his way to the front door, where, producing his
lamp, he threw a beam of light into the letter-box.
“ Any more letters? " I asked.


The House of Mystery 18 5


“ Any more! ” he repeated. " Look for your-
self.”
I stooped and peered through the grille into the
lighted interior ; and then I uttered an exclamation.
The box was empty.
Thorndyke regarded me with a. grim smile. “ We
have been caught on the hop, Jervis, I suspec ,”
said he.
“ It is queer,” I replied. “I didn’t hear any
sound of the opening or closing of the door; did
you ? ”
“ No; I didn’t hear any sound; which makes
me suspect that she did. She would have heard
our voices and she is probably keeping a sharp
look-out at this very moment. I wonder if she
saw you at the window. But whether she did or
not, we must go very warily. Neither of us must
return to the Temple direct, and we had better
separate when we have returned the keys and I will
watch you out of sight and see if anyone is following
you. What are you going to do?”
“ If you don’t want me, I shall run over to
Kensington and drop in to lunch at the Hornbys’.
I said I would call as soon as I had an hour or so
free.”
“ Very well. Do so ; and keep a look-out in case
you are followed. I have to go down to Guildforcl
this afternoon. Under the circumstances, I shall
not go back home, but send Polton a telegram and
take a train at Vauxhall and change at some small
station where I can watch the platform. Be as
careful as you can. Remember that what you


I86 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


have to avoid is being followed to any place where
you are known, and, above all, revealing your con-
nection with number Five A, King’s Bench Walk.”
Having thus considered our immediate move-
ments, we emerged together from the wicket, and
locking it behind us, walked quickly to the house-
agents’, where an opportune oﬁice-boy received
the keys without remark. As we came out of the
ofﬁce, I halted irresolutely and we both looked up
and down the lane.
“ There is no suspicious looking person in sight
at present,” Thomdyke said, and then asked:
“ Which way do you think of going? ”
“ It seems to me,” I replied, “ that my best plan
would be to take a cab or an omnibus so as to get
out of the neighbourhood as quickly as possible.
If I go through Ravensden Street into Kennington
Park Road, I can pick up an omnibus that will
take me to the Mansion House, where I can change
for Kensington. I shall go on the top so that I can
keep a look-out for any other omnibus or cab that
may be following.”
“ Yes,” said Thomdyke, “ that seems a good
plan. I will walk with you and see that you get a
fair start.”
' We walked briskly along the lane and through
Ravensden Street to the Kennington Park Road.
An onmibus was approaching from the south at a
steady jog-trot and we halted at the corner to
wait for it. Several people passed us in different
directions, but none seemed to take any particular
notice of us, though we observed them rather


, The Hunter Hunted I 8 7


narrowly, especially the women. Then the omnibus
crawled up. I sprang on the foot-board and
ascended to the roof, where I seated myself and
surveyed the prospect to the rear. No one else got
on the omnibus—which had not stopped—and no
cab or other passenger vehicle was in sight. I con-
tinued to watch Thorndyke as he stood sentinel at
the corner, and noted that no one appeared to be
making any effort to overtake the omnibus. Pre-
sently my colleague waved his hand to me and
turned back towards Vauxhall, and I, having satis-
ﬁed myself once more that no pursuing cab or
hurrying foot-passenger was in sight, decided that
our precautions had been unnecessary and settled
myself in a rather more comfortable position.
Chapter X The Hunter Hunted
HE omnibus of those days was a leisurely
vehicle. Its ordinary pace was a rather
sluggish trot, and in a thickly populated thorough-
fare its speed was further reduced by frequent
stoppages. Bearing these facts in mind, I gave an
occasional backward glance as we jogged northward,
though my attention soon began to wander from the
rather remote possibility of pursuit to the incidents
of our late exploration.
It had not been difﬁcult to see that Thorndyke
was very well pleased with the results of our search,
but excepting the letter—which undoubtedly opened
up a channel for further inquiry and possible identi-


188 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


ﬁcation—I could not perceive that any of the traces
that we had found justiﬁed his satisfaction. There
were the spectacles, for instance. They were almost
certainly the pair worn by Mr. Graves. But what
then? It was exceedingly improbable that we
should be able to discover the maker of them, and if
we were, it was still more improbable that he would
be able to give us any information that would help
us. Spectacle-makers are not usually on conﬁdential
terms with their customers.
As to the other objects, I could make nothing of
them. The little sticks of reed evidently had some
use that was known to Thorndyke and furnished, by
inference, some kind of information about Weiss,
Graves, or Mrs. Schallibaum. But I had never seen
anything like them before and they conveyed nothing
whatever to me. Then the bottle that had seemed
so signiﬁcant to Thomdyke was to me quite unin-
forming. It did, indeed, suggest that some member
of the household might be connected with the stage,
but it gave no hint as to which one. Certainly
that person was not Mr. Weiss, whose appearance
was as remote from that of an actor as could well be
imagined. At any rate, the bottle and its label gave
me no more useful hint than it might be worth while
to call on Mr. Fox and make inquiries ; and some-
thing told me very emphatically that this was not
what it had conveyed to Thomdyke.
These reﬂections occupied me until the omnibus,
having rumbled over London Bridge and up King
William Street, joined the converging streams of
trafﬁc at the Mansion House. Here I got down and


The Hunter Hunted 189


changed to an omnibus bound for Kensington; on
which I travelled westward pleasantly enough, look-
ing down into the teeming streets and whiling away
the time by meditating upon the very agreeable after-
noon that I promised myself, and considering how far
my new arrangement with Thorndyke would justify
me in entering into certain domestic engagements
of a highly interesting kind.
What might have happened under other circum-
stances it is impossible to tell and useless to specu-
late; the fact is that my journey ended in a disap-
pointment. I arrived, all agog, at the familiar house
in Endsley Gardens only to be told by a sympathetic
housemaid that the family was out ; that Mrs.
Hornby had gone into the country and would not be
home until night, and—which mattered a good deal
more to me—that her niece, Miss Juliet Gibson, had
accompanied her.
Now a man who drops into lunch without announc-
ing his intention or previously ascertaining those of
his friends has no right to quarrel with fate if he ﬁnds
an empty house. Thus philosophically I reﬂected as
I turned away from the house in profound discontent,
demanding of the universe in general why Mrs. Horn-
by need have perverser chosen my ﬁrst free day to
go gadding into the country, and above all, why she
must needs spirit away the fair Juliet. This was the
crowning misfortune (for I could have endured the
absence of the elder lady with commendable forti-
tude), and since I could not immediately return to
the Temple it left me a mere waif and stray for the
time being.


The Hunter Hunted I 9 I


curtain fell and the audience rose, I rescued my hat
from its insecure resting-place and turned to go with
the feeling that I had spent a highly agreeable after-
noon.
Emerging from the theatre, borne on the outgoing
stream, I presently found myself opposite the door
of a tea-shop. Instinct—the ﬁve o’clock instinct
this time—guided me in; for we are creatures of
habit, especially of the tea habit. The unoccupied
table to which I drifted was in a shady corner not
very far from the pay-desk; and here I had been
seated less than a minute when a lady passed me on
her way to the farther table. The glimpse that I
caught of her as she approached—it was but a.
glimpse, since she passed behind me—showed that
she was dressed in black, that she wore a beaded veil
and hat, and in addition to the glass of milk and the
bun that she carried, she was encumbered by an
umbrella and a small basket, apparently containing
some kind of needlework. I must confess that I gave
her very little attention at the time, being occupied
in anxious speculation as to how long it would be
before the fact of my presence would impinge on the
consciousness of the waitress.
The exact time by the clock on the wall was three
minutes and a quarter, at the expiration of which an
anaemic young woman sauntered up to the table and
bestowed on me a glance of sullen interrogation, as if
mutely demanding what the devil I wanted. I
humbly requested that I might be provided with a
pot of tea ; whereupon she turned on her heel (which
was a good deal worn down on the offside) and


192 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


reported my conduct to a lady behind a marble-
topped counter.
It seemed that the counter lady took a lenient
view of the case, for in less than four minutes the
waitress returned and gloomily deposited on the
table before me a tea-pot, a milk-jug, a cup and
saucer, a jug of hot water, and a small pool of milk.
Then she once more departed in dudgeon.
I had just given the tea in the pot a preliminary
stir and was about to pour out the ﬁrst cup when
I felt some one bump lightly against my chair and
heard something rattle on the ﬂoor. I turned
quickly and percieved the lady, whom I had seen
enter, stooping just behind my chair. It seemed
that having ﬁnished her frugal meal she was on
her way out when she had dropped the little basket
that I had noticed hanging from her wrist ; which
basket had promptly disgorged its entire contents
on the ﬂoor.
Now every one must have noticed the demon of
agility that seems to enter into an inanimate object
when it is dropped, and the apparently intelligent
malice with which it discovers, and rolls into, the
most inaccessible places. Here was a case in point.
This particular basket had contained materials
for Oriental bead-work; and no sooner had it
reached the ﬂoor than each item of its contents
appeared to become possessed of a separate and
particular devil impelling it to travel at headlong
speed to some remote and unapproachable comer
as distant as possible from its fellows.
As the only man—and almost the only person—


194 ~~ The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


ceived her acknowledgments, I resumed my seat and
left her to go on her way.
I had once more grasped the handle of the tea-pot
when I made a rather curious discovery. At the
bottom of the tea-cup lay a single lump of sugar.
To the majority of persons it would have meant
nothing. They would have assumed that they
had dropped it in and forgotten it and would have
proceeded to pour out the tea. But it happened
that, at this time, I did not take sugar in my tea ;
whence it followed that the lump had not been put
in by me. Assuming, therefore, that it had been
carelessly dropped in by the waitress, I turned it
out on the table, ﬁlled the cup, added the milk, and
took a tentative draught to test the temperature.
The cup was yet at my lips when I chanced to
look into the mirror that faced my table. Of course
it reﬂected the part of the shop that was behind me,
including the cashier’s desk ; at which the owner of
the basket now stood paying for her refreshment.
Between her and me was a gas chandelier which cast
its light on my back but full on her face ; and her
veil notwithstanding, I could see that she was looking
at me steadily ; was, in fact, watching me intently
and with a very curious expression—an expression
of expectancy mingled with alarm. But this was not
all. As I returned her intent look—which I could
do unobserved, since my face, reﬂected in the mirror,
was in deep shadow—I suddenly perceived that that
steady gaze engaged her right eye only; the other
eye was looking sharply towards her left shoulder.
In short, she had a divergent squint of the left eye.


The Hunter Hunted I 9 5


I put down my cup with a thrill of amazement
and a sudden surging up of suspicion and alarm.
An instant’s reﬂection reminded me that when she
had spoken to me a few moments before, both her
eyes had looked into mine without the slightest
trace of a squint. My thoughts ﬂew back to the
lump of sugar, to the unguarded milk-jug and the
draught of tea that I had already swallowed ; and,
hardly knowing what I intended, I started to my
feet and turned to confront her. But as I rose,
she snatched up her change and darted from the
shop. Through the glass door, I saw her spring on
to the foot—board of a passing hansom and give the
driver some direction. I saw the man whip up his
horse, and, by the time I reached the door, the cab
was moving off swiftly towards Sloane Street.
I stoodirresolute. I had not paid and could not
run out of the shop without making a fuss, and my
hat and stick were still on the rail opposite my seat.
The woman ought to be followed, but I had no fancy
for the task. If the tea that I had swallowed was
innocuous, no harm was done and I was rid of my
pursuer. So far as I was concerned, the incident
was closed. I went back to my seat, and picking
up the lump of sugar which still lay on the table
where I had dropped it, put it carefully in my pocket.
But my appetite for tea was satisﬁed for the present.
Moreover it was hardly advisable to stay in the shop
lest some fresh spy should come to see how I fared.
Accordingly I obtained my check, handed it in at the
cashier’s desk and took my departure.
All this time, it will be observed, I had been taking


196 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


it for granted that the lady in black had followed
me from Kensington to this shop; that, in fact,
she was none other than Mrs. Schallibaum. And,
indeed, the circumstances had rendered the con—
clusion inevitable. In the very instant when I had
perceived the displacement of the left eye, complete
recognition had come upon me. When I had stood
facing the woman, the brief glance at her face
had conveyed to me something dimly reminiscent
of which I had been but half conscious and had
instantly forgotten. But the sight of that char-
acteristic squint had at once revived and explained
it. That the woman was Mrs. Schallibaum I now
felt no doubt whatever.
Nevertheless, the whole affair was profoundly
mysterious. As to the change in the woman’s
appearance, there was little in that. The coarse,
black hair might be her own, dyed, or it might be
a wig. The eyebrows were made-up; it was a
simple enough proceeding and made still more
simple by the beaded veil. But how did she come
to be there at all? How did she happen to be
made-up in this fashion at this particular time?
And, above all, how came she to be provided with
a lump of what I had little doubt was poisoned
sugar ?
I turned over the events of the day, and the more
I considered them the less comprehensible they
appeared. No one had followed the omnibus either
on foot or in a vehicle, as far as I coul : see ; and I
had kept a careful look-out, not only at starting but
for some considerable time after. Yet, all the


The Hunter Hunted 197


time, Mrs. Schallibaum must have been following.
But how ? If she had known that I was intending
to travel by the omnibus she might have gone to
meet it and entered before I did. But she could
not have known: and moreover she did not meet
the omnibus, for we watched its approach from
some considerable distance. I considered whether
she might not have been concealed in the house and
overheard me mention my destination to Thorndyke.
But this failed to explain the mystery, since I had
mentioned no address beyond “ Kensington.” I
had, indeed, mentioned the name of Mrs. Homby,
but the supposition that my friends might be known
by name to Mrs. Schallibaum, or even that she might
have looked the name up in the directory, presented
a probability too remote to be worth entertaining.
But, if I reached no satisfactory conclusion, my
cogitations had one useful effect; they occupied
my mind to the exclusion of that unfortunate
draught of tea. Not that I had been seriously
uneasy after the ﬁrst shock. The quantity that
I had swallowed was not large—the tea being hotter
than I cared for—and I remembered that, when I
had thrown out the lump of sugar, I had turned
the cup upside down on the table; so there could
have been nothing solid left in it. And the lump
of sugar was in itself reassuring, for it certainly
would not have been used in conjunction with any
less conspicuous but more incriminating form of
poison. That lump of sugar was now in my pocket,
reserved for careful examination at my leisure ; and
I reﬂected with a faint grin that it would be a little


198 The Myster of 31, New Inn


disconcerting if it should turn out to contain nothing
but sugar after all.
On leaving the tea-shop, I walked up Sloane
Street with the intention of doing what I ought
to have done earlier in the day. I was going to
make perfectly sure that no spy was dogging my
footsteps. But for my ridiculous conﬁdence I could
have done so quite easily before going to Endsley
Gardens ; and now, made wiser by a startling experi-
ence, I proceeded with systematic care. It was
still broad daylight—for the lamps in the tea-shop
had been rendered necessary only by the faulty
construction of the premises and the dullness of
the aftemoon—and in an open space I could see far
enough for complete saftey. Arriving at the top
of Sloane Street, I crossed Knightsbridge, and,
entering Hyde Park, struck out towards the Serpen-
tine. Passing along the eastern shore, I entered
one of the long paths that lead towards the Marble
Arch and strode along it at such a pace as would
make it necessary for any pursuer to hurry in order
to keep me in sight. Half-way across the great
stretch of turf, I halted for a few moments and noted
the few people who were coming in my direction.
Then I turned sharply to the left and headed straight
for the Victoria Gate, but again, half-way, I turned
off among a clump of trees, and, standing behind the
trunk of one of them, took a fresh survey of the
people who were moving along the paths. All were
at a considerable distance and none appeared to be
coming my way.
I now moved cautiously from one tree to another


The Hunter Hunted I99


and passed through the wooded region to the south,
crossed the Serpentine bridge at a rapid walk and
hurrying along the south shore left the Park by
Apsley House. From hence I walked at the same
rapid pace along Piccadilly, insinuating myself
among the crowd with the skill born of long acquaint-
ance with the London streets, crossed amidst the
seething trafﬁc at the Circus, darted up Wind-
mill Street and began to zigzag amongst the narrow
streets and courts of Soho. Crossing the Seven
Dials and Drury Lane I passed through the multi-
tudinous back-streets and alleys that then ﬁlled
the area south of Lincoln’s Inn, came out by New-
castle Street, Holywell Street and Half-Moon Alley
into the Strand, which I crossed immediately, ulti-
mately entering the Temple by Devereux Court.
Even then I did not relax my precautions. From
one court to another I passed quickly, loitering
in those dark entries and unexpected passages that
are known to so few but the regular Templars, and
coming out into the open only at the last where the
wide passage of King’s Bench Walk admits of no
evasion. Half-way up the stairs, I stood for some
time in the shadow, watching the approaches from
the staircase window; and when, at length, I felt
satisﬁed that I had taken every precaution that
was possible, I inserted my key and let myself into
our chambers. "
Thorndyke had already arrived, and, as I entered, he
rose to greet me with an expression of evident relief.
“ I am glad to see you, Jervis,” he said. “ I have
been rather anxious about you}!


200 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ Why? “ I asked.
“ For several reasons. One is that you are the
sole danger that threatens these people—as far
as they know. Another is that we made a most
ridiculous mistake. We overlooked a fact that
ought to have struck us instantly. But how have
you fared? ”
“ Better than I deserved. That good lady stuck
to me like a burr—at least I believe she did.”
“ I have no doubt she did. We have been caught
napping ﬁnely, Jervis.”
“ How? ”
" We’ll go into that presently. Let us hear about
your adventures ﬁrst.”
I gave him a full account of my movements from
the time when we parted to that of my arrival home,
omitting no incident that I was able to remember
and, as far as I could, reconstituting my exceedingly
devious homeward route.
“ Your retreat was masterly," he remarked with
a broad smile. “ I should think that it would have
utterly defeated any pursuer ; and the only pity is
that it was probably wasted on the desert air. Your
pursuer had by that time become a fugitive. But
you were wise to take these precautions, for, of
course, Weiss might have followed you.”
_“ But I thought he was in Hamburg? ”
“ Did you? You are a very conﬁding young
gentleman, for a budding medical jurist. Of course
we don’t know that he is not ; but the fact that he
has given Hamburg as his present whereabouts
establishes a strong presumption that he is some-


The Hunter Hunted 20 I


where else. I only hope that he has not located
you, and, from what you tell me of your later
methods, I fancy that you would have shaken him
off even if he had started to follow you from the
tea-shop.”
“ I hope so too. But how did that woman manage
to stick to me in that way ? What was the mistake
we made? ”
Thorndyke laughed grimly. “ It was a perfectly
asinine mistake, Jervis. You started up Kennington
Park Road on a leisurely, jog-trotting omnibus,
and neither you nor I remembered what there is
underneath Kennington Park Road.”
“ Underneath ! ” I exclaimed, completely puzzled
for the moment. Then, suddenly realizing what
he meant, “ Of course! ” I exclaimed. “ Idiot
that I am! You mean the electric railway? ”
“ Yes. That explains everything. Mrs. Schalli-
baum must have watched us from some shop and
quietly followed us up the lane. There were a good
many women about and several were walking in our
direction. There was nothing to distinguish her
from the others unless you had recognized her, which
you would hardly have been able to do if she had
worn a veil and kept at a fair distance. At least I
think not.”
“ No,” I agreed, “ I certainly should not. I had
only seen her in a half-dark room. In outdoor
clothes and with a veil, I should never have been
able to identify her without very close inspection.
Besides there was the disguise or make-up.”
“ Not at that time. She would hardly come


202 a The Mystery of 31, New Inn


disguised to her own house, for it might have led
to her being challenged and asked who she was.
I think we may take it that there was no actual
disguise, although she would probably wear a shady
hat and a veil ; which would have prevented either
of us from picking her out from the other women
in the street.”
“ And what do you think happened next? ”
“ I think that she simply walked past us—
probably on the other side of the road—as we stood
waiting for the omnibus, and turned up Kennington
Park Road. She probably guessed that we were
waiting for the omnibus and walked up the road in
the direction in which it was going. Presently the
omnibus would pass her, and there were you in full
view on top keeping a vigilant look-out in the wrong
direction. Then she would quicken her pace a little
and in a minute or two would arrive at the Kenning-
ton Station of the South London Railway. In a
minute or two more she would be in one of the electric
trains whirling along under the street on which your
omnibus was crawling. She would get out at the
Borough Station, or she might take a more risky
chance and go on to the Monument ; but in any case
she would wait for your omnibus, hail it and get
inside. I suppose you took up some passengers on
the way? ” i .
“ Oh dear, yes. We were stopping every two-
or three minutes to take up or set down passengers ;
and most of them were women.” ’
“ Very well ; then we may take it that when you
arrived at the Mansion House, Mrs. Schallibaum


The Hunter Hunted 203


was one of your inside passengers. It was a rather
quaint situation, I think.” I
“ Yes, confound her! What a couple of noodles
she must have thought us! ”
“ No doubt. And that is the one consoling
feature in the case. She will have taken us for a
pair of absolute greenhorns. But to continue. Of
course she travelled in your omnibus to Kensington
——you ought to have gone inside on both occasions,
so that you could see every one who entered and
examine the inside passengers ; she will have
followed you to Endsley Gardens and probably noted
the house you went to. Thence she will have fol-
lowed you to the restaurant and may even have
lunched there."
“ It is quite possible,” said I. “ There were two
rooms and they were ﬁlled principally with women.”
“ Then she will have followed you to Sloane Street,
and, as you persisted in riding outside, she could
easily take an inside place in your omnibus. As to
the theatre, she must have taken it as a veritable
gift of the gods ; an arrangement made by you for
her special convenience.”
(l P )I
“My dear fellow! consider. She had only to
follow you in and see you safely into your seat and
there you were, left till called for. She could then
go home, make up for her part; draw out a plan
of action, with the help, perhaps, of Mr. Weiss,
provide herself with the necessary means and
appliances and, at the appointed time, call and
collect you."


204.- The Mystery 0f 3!, New Inn


“ That is assuming a good deal," I objected.
“ It is assuming, for instance, that she lives within
a moderate distance of Sloane Square. Otherwise
it would have been impossible.”
“ Exactly. That is why I assume it. You don’t
suppose that she goes about habitually with lumps
of prepared sugar in her pocket. And if not, then
she must have got that lump from somewhere.
Then the beads suggest a carefully prepared plan,
and, as I said just now, she can hardly have been
made-up when she met us in Kennington Lane.
From all of which it seems likely that her present
abode is not very far from Sloane Square."
“ At any rate,” said I, “ it was taking a con-
siderable risk. I might have left the theatre before
she came back.”
“ Yes,” Thomdyke agreed. “ But it is like a.
woman to take chances. A man would probably
have stuck to you when once he had got you off
your guard. But she was ready to take chances.
She chanced the railway, and it came off; she
chanced your remaining in the theatre, and that
came off too. She calculated on the probability
of your getting tea when you came out, and she hit
it off again. And then she took one chance too
many ; she assumed that you probably took sugar
in your tea, and she was wrong.“
“ We are taking it for granted that the sugar was
prepared,” I remarked.
“ Yes. Our explanation is entirely hypothetical
and may be entirely wrong. But it all hangs
together, and if we ﬁnd any poisonous matter in


The Hunter Hunted 207


“ No, I should say not, to judge by her expression.
She looked terriﬁed. She is not as hardened as her
rascally companion.” “
“ Which is fortunate for you, Jervis. If she had
not been in such a ﬂuster, she would have waited
until you had poured out your tea, which was what
she probably meant to do, or have dropped the sugar
into the milk-jug. In either case you would have
got a poisonous dose before you noticed anything
amiss.”
“ They are a pretty pair, Thorndyke,” I ex-
claimed. “ A human life seems to be no more to
them than the life of a ﬂy or a beetle.”
“ No; that is so. They are typical poisoners
of the worst kind ; of the intelligent, cautious,
resourceful kind. They are a standing menace to
society. As long as they are at large, human lives
are in danger, and it is our business to see that they
do not remain at large a moment longer than is
unavoidable. And that brings us to another point.
You had better keep indoors for the next few days.”
“ Oh, nonsense,” I protested. “ I can take care
of myself.”
“ I won’t dispute that,” said Thorndyke, “ al-
though I might. But the matter is of vital impor-
tance and we can’t be too careful. Yours is the only
evidence that could convict these people. They
know that and will stick at nothing to get rid of you
-—for by this time they will almost certainly have
ascertained that the tea-shop plan has failed. Now
your life is of some value to you and to another
person whom I could mention ; but apart from that,


208 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


you are the indispensable instrument for ridding
society of these dangerous vermin. Moreover, if
you were seen abroad and connected with these
chambers, they would get the information that their
case was really being investigated in a businesser
manner. If Weiss has not already left the country
he would do so immediately, and if he has, Mrs.
Schallibaum would join him at once, and we might
never be able to lay hands on them. You must stay
indoors, out of sight, and you had better write to
Miss Gibson and ask her to warn the servants to
give no information about you to anyone.“
“ And how long,” I asked, “ am I to be held on
parole ? "
“ Not long, I think. We have a very promising
start. If I have any luck, I shall be able to collect
all the evidence I want in about a week. But there
is an element of chance in some of it which prevents
me from giving a date. And it is just possible
that I may have started on a false track. But that
I shall be able to tell you better in a day or two.”
“ And I suppose,” I said gloomily, “ I shall be
out of the hunt altogether? ”
“Not at all,” he replied. " You have got the
Blackmore case to attend to. I shall hand you
over all the documents and get you to make an
orderly digest of the evidence. You will then have
all the facts and can work out the case for yourself.
Also I shall ask you to help Polton in some little
operations which are designed to throw light into
dark places and which you will ﬁnd both entertaining
and instructive.”


The Hunter Hunted 209


" Supposing Mrs. Homby should propose to call
and take tea with us in the gardens ? ” I suggested.
“ And bring Miss Gibson with her ? ” Thorndyke
added dryly. “ No, Jervis, it would never do.
You must make that quite clear to her. It is more
probable than not that Mrs. Schallibaum made a
careful note of the house in Endsley Gardens, and
as that would be the one place actually known to
her, she and Weiss—if he is in England—would
almost certainly keep a watch on it. If they should
succeed in connecting that house with these cham-
bers, a few inquiries would show them the exact
state of the case. No ; we must keep them in the
dark if we possibly can. We have shown too much
of our hand already. It is hard on you, but it cannot
be helped.”
“ Oh, don’t think I am complaining,” I exclaimed.
“ If it is a matter of business, I am as keen as you
are. I thought at ﬁrst that you were merely con-
sidering the safety of my vile body. When shall I
start on my job?”
" To-morrow morning. I shall give you my notes
on the Blackmore case and the copies of the will
and the depositions, from which you had better
draw up a digest of the evidence with remarks as
to the conclusions that it suggests, Then there
are our gleanings from New Inn to be looked over
and considered; and with regard to this case, we
have the fragments of a pair of spectacles which had
better be put together into a rather more intelligible
form in case we have to produce them in evidence.
That will keep you occupied for a day or two,


The Blackmore Case Reviewed 2II


legal practice; and it also showed me that I had
yet to acquire it. For, as I looked over the deposi-
tions and the copy of the will, memories of the
mysterious house in Kennington Lane continually
intruded into my reﬂections, and the ﬁgure of
Mrs. Schallibaum, white-faced, terriﬁed, expectant,
haunted me continually.
In truth, my interest in the Blackmore case was
little more than academic, whereas in the Kenning-
ton case I was one of the parties and was personally
concerned. To me, John Blackmore was but a
name, Jeffrey but a shadowy ﬁgure to which I could
assign no deﬁnite personality, and Stephen himself
but a casual stranger. Mr. Graves, on the other
hand, was a real person. I had seen him amidst the
tragic circumstances that had probably heralded his
death, and had brought away with me, not only a
lively recollection of him, but a feeling of profound
pity and concern as to his fate. The villain Weiss,
too, and the terrible woman who aided, abetted and,
perhaps, even directed him, lived in my memory as
vivid and dreadful realities. Although I had uttered
no hint to Thorndyke, I lamented inwardly that I
had not been given some work—if there was any to
do—connected with this case, in which I was so
deeply interested, rather than with the dry, purely
legal and utterly bewildering case of Jeffrey Black-
more’s will. '
Nevertheless, I stuck loyally to my task. I read
through the depositions and the will—without
getting a single glimmer of fresh light on the case——
and I made a. careful digest of all the facts. I


212 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


compared my digest with Thorndyke’s notes—of
which I also made a copy—and found that, brief as
they were, they contained several matters that I
had overlooked. I also drew up a brief account of
our visit to New Inn, with a list of the objects that
we had observed or collected. And then I addressed
myself to the second part of my task, the statement
of my conclusions from the facts set forth.
It was only when I came to make the attempt
that I realized how completely I was at sea. In
spite of Thorndyke’s recommendation to study
Marchmont’s statement as it was summarized in
those notes which I had copied, and of his hint that
I should ﬁnd in that statement something highly
signiﬁcant, I was borne irresistibly to one con-
clusion, and one only—and the wrong one at that,
as I suspected: that Jeffrey Blackmore’s will was
a perfectly regular, sound and valid document.
I tried to attack the validity of the will from
various directions, and failed every time. As to its
genuineness, that was obviously not in question.
There seemed to me only two conceivable respects
in which any objection could be raised, viz. the
competency of Jeffrey to execute a will and the
possibility of undue inﬂuence having been brought
to bear on him.
With reference to the ﬁrst, there was the un-
doubted fact that Jeffrey was addicted to the
opium habit, and this might, under some circum-
stances, interfere with a testator’s competency to
make a will. But had any such circumstances
existed in this case ? Had the drug habit produced


The Blackmore Case Reviewed 213


such mental changes in the deceased as would des-
troy or weaken his judgment ? There was not a
particle of evidence in favour of any such belief.
Up to the very end he had managed his own affairs,
and, if his habits of life had undergone a change,
they were still the habits of a perfectly sane and
responsible man.
The question of undue inﬂuence was more difﬁcult.
If it applied to any person in particular, that person
could be none other than John Blackmore. Now it
was an undoubted fact that, of all Jeffrey’s acquain-
tance, his brother John was the only one who knew
that he was in residence at New Inn. Moreover John
had visited him there more than once. It was there-
fore possible that inﬂuence might have been brought
to bear on the deceased. But there was no evidence
that it had. The fact that the deceased man’s only
brother should be the one person who knew where
he was living was not a remarkable one, and it had
been satisfactorily explained by the necessity of
Jeffrey’s ﬁnding a reference on applying for the
chambers. And against the theory of undue in-
ﬂuence was the fact that the testator had voluntarily
brought his will to the lodge and executed it in the
presence of entirely disinterested witnesses.
In the end I had to give up the problem in despair,
and, abandoning the documents, turned my attention
to the facts elicited by our visit to New Inn.
What had we learned from our exploration ?
It was clear that Thorndyke had picked up some
facts that had appeared to him important. But
important in what respect ? The only possible


The Blackmore Case Reviewed 215


Blackmore, with his expert knowledge of the
cuneiform character, had never noticed that it was
upside down ; or, if he had noticed it, that he had
never taken the trouble to have it altered.
What could this mean? If he had noticed the
error but had not troubled to correct it, that would
point to a very singular state of mind, an inertness
and indifference remarkable even in an opium-
smoker. But assuming such a state of mind, I
could not see that it had any bearing on the will,
excepting that it was rather inconsistent with the
tendency to make fussy and needless alterations
which the testator had actually shown. On the
other hand, if he had not noticed the inverted
position of the photograph he must have been
nearly blind or quite idiotic; for the photograph
was over two feet long and the characters large
enough to be read easily by a person of ordinary
eyesight at a distance of forty or ﬁfty feet. Now
he obviously was not in a state of dementia, whereas
his eyesight was admittedly bad ; and it seemed to
me that the only conclusion deducible from the
photograph was that it furnished a measure of the
badness of the deceased man’s vision—that it
proved him to have been verging on total blindness.
But there was nothing startling new in this. He
had, himself, declared that he was fast losing his
sight. And again, what was the bearing of his
partial blindness on the will ? A totally blind man
cannot draw up his will at all. But if he has eyesight
sufﬁcient to enable him to write out and sign a will,
mere defective vision will not lead him to muddle


216 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


the provisions. Yet something of this kind seemed
to be in Thorndyke’s mind, for now I recalled the
question that he had put to the porter: “ When
you read the will over in Mr. Blackmore’s presence,
did you read it aloud? ” That question could
have but one signiﬁcance. It implied a doubt as
to whether the testator was fully aware of the exact
nature of the document that he was signing. Yet,
if he was able to write and sign it, surely he was
able also to read it through, to say nothing of the
fact that, unless he was demented, he must have
remembered what he had written.
Thus, once more, my reasoning only led me into
a blind alley at the end of which was the will,
regular and valid and fulﬁlling all the requirements
that the law imposed. Once again I had to confess
myself beaten and in full agreement with Mr. March-
mont that “ there was no case ” ; that “ there was
nothing in dispute.” Nevertheless, I carefully ﬁxed
in the pocket ﬁle that Thomdyke had given me the
copy that I had made of his notes, together with the
notes on our visit to New Inn, and the few and
unsatisfactory conclusions at which I had arrived;
and this brought me to the end of my ﬁrst morning
in my new capacity.
“ And how,” Thomdyke asked as we sat at lunch,
“ has my learned friend progressed? Does he
propose that we advise Mr. Marchmont to enter a
caveat ? ”
“ I’ve read all the documents and boiled all the
evidence down to' a stiff jelly; and I am in a worse
fog than ever.”


The Blackmore Case Reviewed = 217


“ There seems to be a slight mixture of metaphors
in my learned friend’s remarks. But never mind the
fog, Jervis. There isacertain virtue in fog. It serves,
like a picture frame, to surround the essential with a
neutral zone that separates it from the irrelevant.”
“ That is a very profound observation, Thorn-
dyke,” I remarked ironically.
“ I was just thinking so myself,” he rejoined.
“ And if you could contrive to explain what it
means—-—”
“ Oh, but that is unreasonable. When one
throws off a subtly philosophic obiter dictum one
looks to the discerning critic to supply the meaning.
By the way, I am going to introduce you to the
gentle art of photography this afternoon. I am
getting the loan of all the cheques that were drawn
by Jeffrey Blackmore during his residence at New
Inn—there are only twenty-three of them, all told-
and I am going to photograph them.”
“ I shouldn’t have thought the bank people would
have let them go out of their possession.”
“ They are not going to. One of the partners,
a Mr. Britton, is bringing them here himself and
will be present while the photographs are being
taken ; so they will not go out of his custody. But,
all the same, it is a great concession, and I should
not have obtained it but for the fact that I have
done a good deal of work for the bank and that Mr.
Britton is more or less a personal friend.”
“ By the way, how comes it that the cheques are
at the bank? Why were they not returned to
Jeffrey with the pass-book in the usual way? ”


218 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ I understand from Britton," replied Thomdyke,
“ that all Jeffrey’s cheques were retained by the
bank at his request. When he was travelling he
used to leave his investment securities and other
valuable documents in his bankers’ custody, and,
as he has never applied to have them returned, the
bankers still have them and are retaining them until
the will is proved, when they will, of course, hand
over everything to the executors.”
“ What is the object of photographing these
cheques? ” I asked.
“ There are several objects. First, since a good
photograph is practically as good as the original,
when we have the photographs we practically have
the cheques for reference. Then, since a photo-
graph can be duplicated indeﬁnitely, it is possible
to perform experiments on it which involve its
destruction; which would, of course, be impossible
in the case of original cheques.”
“ But the ultimate object, I mean. What are
you going to prove? "
“ You are incorrigible, Jervis," he exclaimed.
“ How should I know what I am going to prove ?
This is an investigation. If I knew the result before-
hand, I shouldn’t want to perform the experiment.”
He looked at his watch, and, as we rose from the
table, he said:
“ If we have ﬁnished, we had better go up to
the laboratory and see that the apparatus is ready.
Mr. Britton is a busy man, and, as he is doing us
a great service, we mustn’t keep him waiting when
he comes."


The Blackmore Case Reviewed 219


We ascended to the laboratory, where Polton was
already busy inspecting the massively built copying
camera which—with the long, steel guides on which
the easel or copy-holder travelled—took up the whole
length of the room on the side opposite to that
occupied by the chemical bench. As I was to be
inducted into the photographic art, I looked at it
with more attention than I had ever done before.
“ We’ve made some improvements since you were
here last, sir,” said Polton, who was delicately lubri-
cating the steel guides. “ We’ve ﬁtted these steel
runners instead of the blackleaded wooden ones that
we used to have. And we’ve made two scales
instead of one. Hallo ! That’s the downstairs bell.
Shall I go sir? ”
“ Perhaps you’d better,” said Thorndyke. “ It
may not be Mr. Britton, and I don’t want to be
caught and delayed just now.”
However, it was Mr. Britton; a breezy alert-
looking middle-aged man, who came in escorted by
Polton and shook our hands cordially, having been
previously warned of my presence. He carried a
small but solid hand-bag, to which he clung tenaci—
ously up to the very moment when its contents were
required for use.
“So that is the camera,” said he, running an
inquisitive eye over the instrument. “ Very ﬁne
one, too; I am a bit of a photographer myself.
What is that graduation on the side-bar ? ” l -
“ Those are the scales,” replied Thorndyke, “ that
shows the degree of magniﬁcation or reduction. The
pointer is ﬁxed to the easel and travels with it, of


220 The Mystery of 31, New Inn '


course, showing the exact size of the photograph.
When the pointer is opposite o the photograph will
be identical in size with the object photographed ;
when it points to, say, X 6, the photograph will be
six times as long as the object, or magniﬁed thirty-
six times superﬁcially, whereas if the pointer is at
—Z- 6, the photograph will be a sixth of the length
of the object, or one thirty-sixth superﬁcial."
“ Why are there two scales ? ” Mr. Britton asked.
“ There is a separate scale for each of the two
lenses that we principally use. For great magniﬁ-
cation or reduction a lens of comparatively short
focus must be used, but, as a long-focus lens gives
a more perfect image, we use one of very long focus
-—thirty-six inches—for copying the same size or for
slight magniﬁcation or reduction."
“ Are you going to magnify these cheques? ” Mr.
Britton asked.
“ Not in the ﬁrst place," replied Thomdyke.
“ For convenience and speed I am going to photo-
graph them half-size, so that six cheques will go on
one whole plate. Afterwards we can enlarge from
the negatives as much as we like. But we should
probably enlarge only the signatures in any case.”
. The precious bag was now opened and the twenty-
three cheques brought out and laid on the bench
in a consecutive series in the order of their dates.
They were then ﬁxed by tapes—to avoid making
pin-holes in them—in batches of six to small draw-
ing boards, each batch being so arranged that the
signatures were towards the middle. The ﬁrst board
was clamped to the easel, the latter was slid along


The Blackmore Case Re'vie'wed 221


its guides until the pointer stood at -I- 2 on the
long-focus scale and Thorndyke proceeded to focus
the camera with the aid of a little microscope that
Polton had made for the purpose. When Mr.
Britton and I had inspected the exquisitely sharp
image on the focusing-screen through the micro-
scope, Polton introduced the plate and made the
ﬁrst exposure, carrying the dark-slide off to develop
the plate while the next batch of cheques was being
ﬁxed in position.
In his photographic technique, as in everything
else, Polton followed as closely as he could the
methods of his principal and instructor; methods
characterized by that unhurried precision that leads
to perfect accomplishment. When the ﬁrst negative
was brought forth, dripping, from the dark-room, it
was without spot or stain, scratch or pin-hole ; uni-
form in colour and of exactly the required density.
The six cheques shown on it—ridiculously small in
appearance, though only reduced to half-length—
looked as clear and sharp as ﬁne etchings ; though,
to be sure, my opportunity for examining them was
rather limited, for Polton was uncommonly careful
to keep the wet plate out of reach and so safe from
injury.
“ Well,” said Mr. Britton, when, at the end of
the séance, he returned his treasures to the bag,
“ you have now got twenty-three of our cheques,
to all intents and purposes. I hope you are not
going to make any unlawful use of them—must tell
our cashiers to keep a bright look-out ; and ”-—here
he lowered his voice impressively and addressed


222 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


himself to me and Polton—“ you understand that
this is a private matter between Dr. Thomdyke and
me. Of course, as Mr. Blackmore is dead, there is
no reason why his cheques should not be photo-
graphed for legal purposes; but we don’t want it
talked about; nor, I think, does Dr. Thomdyke.”
“ Certainly not,” Thorndyke agreed emphatic-
ally; “ but you need not be uneasy, Mr. Britton.
We are very uncommunicative people in this
establishment.”
As my colleague and I escorted our visitor down
the stairs, he returned to the subject of the cheques.
“ I don’t understand what you want them for,”
he remarked. “ There is no question turning on
signatures in the case of Blackmore deceased, is
there ? ”
“ I should say not,” Thomdyke replied rather
evasively.
“ I should say very decidedly not,” said Mr.
Britton, “ if I understood Marchmont aright. And,
even if there were, let me tell you, these signatures
that you have got wouldn’t help you. I have looked
them over very closely—and I have seen a few signa-
tures in my time, you know. Marchmont asked me
to glance over them as a matter of form, but I don’t
believe in matters of form; I examined them very
carefully. There is an appreciable amount of varia-
tion; a very appreciable amount. But under the
variation one can trace the personal character (which
is what matters) ; the subtle, indescribable quality
that makes it recognizable to the expert eye as
Jeffrey Blackmore’s writing. You understand me.


224. The Mystery of 3!, New Inn


speech and accent. And the individual nervous
system, by means of these characteristic movements,
transfers its peculiarities to inanimate objects that
are the products of such movements ; as we see in
pictures, in carving, in musical execution and in
handwriting. No one has ever painted quite like
Reynolds or Romney; no one has ever played
exactly like Liszt or Paganini ; the pictures or the
sounds produced by them, were, so to speak, an
extension of the physiognomy of the artist. And
so with handwriting. A particular specimen is the
product of a particular set of motor centres in an
individual brain.”
“ These are very interesting considerations, Thom-
dyke,” I remarked; “ but I don’t quite see their
present application. Do you mean them to bear in
any special way on the Blackmore case ? ”
“ I think they do bear on it very directly. I
thought so while Mr. Britton was making his very
illuminating remarks.”
“ I don’t see how. In fact I cannot see why you
are going into the question of the signatures at all.
The signature on the will is admittedly genuine, and
that seems to me to dispose of the whole affair.”
“ My dear Jervis,” said he, “ you and March-
mont are allowing yourselves to be obsessed by a
particular fact—a very striking and weighty fact,
I will admit, but still, only an isolated fact. ;_ Jeffrey
Blackmore executed his will in a regular manner,
complying with all the necessary formalities and
conditions. In the face of that single circumstance
you and Marchmont would ‘ chuck up the sponge,’


226 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


of very small pieces of broken glass, some of which
had been cemented together by their edges.
“ These, I suppose,” said I, looking with con-
siderable curiosity at the little collection, “ are the
pieces of glass that we picked up in poor Blackmore’s
bedroom ? ”
“ Yes. You see that Polton has been endeavour-
ing 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 char-
acter of the object fairly well.”
He picked out the little irregularly shaped object
and handed it to me; and I could not but admire
the neatness with which Polton had joined the tiny
fragments together.
I took the little “ restoration," and, holding it up
before my eyes, moved it to and fro as I looked
through it at the window.
“ It was not a lens," I pronounced eventually.
“ No,” Thorndyke agreed, “ it was not a lens.”
“ And so cannot 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 por-
tions of a watch-glass.”
Q “ That is Polton’s opinion,” said Thomdyke, “ and
I think you are both wrong.”
“ What do you say to the glass of a miniature or
locket -P " -


The Blac/cmore Case Reviewed 227


“ That is rather more probable, but it is not my
view.”
“ What do you think it is ? ” I asked. But
Thorndyke was not to be drawn.
“ I am submitting the problem for solution by
my learned friend,” he replied with an exasperating
smile, and then added: “ I don’t say that you and
Polton are wrong ; only that I don’t agree with you.
Perhaps you had better make a note of the proper-
ties of this object, and consider it at your leisure
when you are ruminating on the other data referring
to the Blackmore case.”
“ My ruminations,” I said, “ always lead me back
to the same point.”
“ But you mustn’t let them,” he replied. “ Shuffle
your data about. Invent hypotheses. Never mind
if they seem rather wild. Don’t put them aside on
that account. Take the ﬁrst hypothesis that you
can inVent and test it thoroughly with your facts.
You will probably have to reject it, but you will
be certain to have learned something new. Then
try again with a fresh one. You remember what I
told you of my methods when I began this branch
ofv practice and had plenty of time on my hands? ”
“ I am not sure that I do.” -
“ Well, I used to occupy my leisure in constructing
imaginary cases, mostly criminal, for the purpose of
study and for the acquirement of experience. For
instance, I would devise an ingenious fraud and
would plan it in detail, taking every precaution that
I could think of against failure or detection, con-
sidering, and elaborately providing for, every imagin-


228 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


able contingency. For the time being, my entire
attention was concentrated on it, making it as per-
fect and secure and undetectable as I could with
the knowledge and ingenuity at my command. I
behaved exactly as if I were proposing actually to
carry it out, and my life or liberty depended on its
success—excepting that I made full notes of every
detail of the scheme. Then when my plans were
as complete as I could make them, and I could think
of no way in which to improve them, I changed
sides and considered the case from the standpoint
of detection. I analysed the case, I picked out its
inherent and unavoidable weaknesses, and, espe-
cially, I noted the respects in which a fraudulent
proceeding of a particular kind differed from the
bona ﬁde proceeding that it simulated. The exercise
was invaluable to me. I acquired as much experi-
ence from those imaginary cases as I should from
real ones, and in addition, I learned a method which
is the one that I practise to this day.”
“ Do you mean that you still invent imaginary
cases as mental exercises? "
“ No ; I mean that, when I have a problem of any
intricacy, I invent a case which ﬁts the facts and the
assumed motives of one of the parties. Then I work
at that case until I ﬁnd whether it leads to elucida-
tion or to some fundamental disagreement. In the
latter case I reject it and begin the process over
again.”
" Doesn’t that method sometimes involve a good
deal of wasted time and energy ? ” I asked.
“ No ; because each time that you fail to establish


The Portrait 2 2 9


a given case, you exclude a particular explanation
of the facts and narrow down the ﬁeld of inquiry.
By repeating the process, you are bound, in the end,
to arrive at an imaginary case which ﬁts all the facts.
Then your imaginary case is the real case and the
problem is solved. Let me recommend you to give
the method a trial.”
I promised to do so, though with no very lively
expectations as to the result, and with this, the
subject was allowed, for the present, to drop.
Chapter XII The Portrait
HE state of mind which Thorndyke had advised
me to cultivate was one that did not come
easily. However much I endeavoured to shufﬂe the
facts of the Blackmore case, there was one which
inevitably turned up on the top of the pack. The
circumstances surrounding the execution of Jeffrey
Blackmore’s will intruded into all my cogitations on
the subject with hopeless persistency. That scene
in the porter’s lodge was to me what King Charles’s
head was to poor Mr. Dick. In the midst of my
praiseworthy efforts to construct some intelligible
scheme of the case, it would make its appearance
and reduce my mind to instant chaos.
For the next few days, Thorndyke was very much
occupied with one or two civil cases, which kept
him in court during the whole of the sitting; and
when he came home, he seemed indisposed to talk
on professional topics. Meanwhile, Polton worked


230 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


steadily at the photographs of the signatures, and,
with a view to gaining experience, I assisted him
and watched his methods.
In the present case, the signatures were enlarged
from their original dimensions—rather less than an
inch and a half in length—to a length of four and a
half inches ; which rendered all the little peculiari-
ties of the handwriting surprisingly distinct and con-
spicuous. Each signature was eventually mounted
on a slip of card bearing a number and the date of
the cheque from which it was taken, so that it was
possible to place any two signatures together for
comparison. I looked over the whole series and very
carefully compared those which showed any differ-
ences, but without discovering anything more than
might have been expected in view of Mr. Britton's
statement. There were some triﬂing variations, but
they were all very much alike, and no one could
doubt, on looking at them, that they were all written
by the same hand.
As this, however, was apparently not in dispute,
it furnished no new information. Thomdyke's
object—for I felt certain that he had something
deﬁnite in his mincL—must be tojtest something apart
from the genuineness of the signatures. But what
could that something be? I dared not ask him,
for questions of that kind were anathema, so there
was nothing for it but to lie low and see what he
would do with the photographs.
‘The whole series was ﬁnished on the fourth mom-
ing after my adventure at Sloane Square, and the
pack of cards was duly delivered by Polton when


The Portrait 2 3 I


he brought in the breakfast tray. Thorndyke took
up the pack somewhat with the air of a whist player,
and, as he ran through them, I noticed that the
number had increased from twenty-three to twenty-
four. ,
“ The additional one,” Thorndyke explained, “is
the signature to the ﬁrst will, which was in March-
mont’s possession. I have added it to the collection
as it carries us back to an earlier date. The signa-
ture of the second will presumably resembles those
of the cheques drawn about the same date. But
that is not material, or, if it should become so, we
could claim to examine the second wi .”
He laid the cards out on the table in the order
of their dates and slowly ran his eye down the series.
I watched him closely and ventured presently to
ask :
“ Do you agree with Mr. Britton as to the general
identity of character in the whole set of signa-
tures ? ”
“ Yes,” he replied. “ I should certainly have
put them down as being all the signatures of one
person . The variations are very slight. The later
signatures are a little stiffer, a little more shaky and
indistinct, and the B’s and k’s are both appreciably
different from those in the earlier ones. 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 not having been
remarked on by Mr. Britton.” I
“ Indeed I ” said I, stooping to examine the photo-
graphs with fresh interest ; “ what is that ? ”


The Portrait 2 3 3


an inspection of this series is this : that there was a
change in the character of the signature; a very
slight change, but quite recognizable. Now that
change was not gradual or insidious nor was it pro-
gressive. It occurred at a certain deﬁnite time. At
ﬁrst there were one or two reversions to the earlier
form, but after number six the new style continued
to the end ; and you notice that it continued with-
out any increase in the change and without any
variation. There are no intermediate forms. Some
of the signatures are in the ‘ old style ’ and some
in the ‘ new,’ but there are none that are half and
half. So that, to repeat : We have here two types
of signature, very much alike, but distinguishable.
They alternate, but do not merge into one another
to produce intermediate forms. The change occurs
abruptly, but shows no tendency to increase as time
goes on ; it is not a progressive change. What do
you make of that, Jervis? ”
“ It is very remarkable,” I said, poring over the
cards to verify Thorndyke’s statements. “ I don’t
quite know what to make of it. If the circumstances
admitted of the idea of forgery, one would suspect
the genuineness of some of the signatures. But they
don’t—at any rate, in the case of the later will, to
say nothing of Mr. Britton’s opinion on the signa-
tures.”
“ Still,” said Thorndyke, “ there must be some
explanation of the change in the character of the
signatures, and that explanation cannot be the fail-
ing eyesight of the writer; for that is a gradually
progressive apd continuous condition, whereas the


234. The Mystery of 31, New Inn


change in the writing is abrupt and intermittent.”
I considered Thomdyke’s remark for a few mo-
ments ; and then a light—though not a very brilliant
one—seemed to break on me.
“ I think I see what you are driving at,” said I.
“ You mean that the change in the writing must be
associated with some new condition affecting the
writer, and that that condition existed inter-
mittently ? ”
Thomdyke nodded approvingly, and I continued :
“ The only intermittent condition that we know of
is the effect of opium. So that we might consider
the clearer' signatures to have been made when
Jeffrey was in his normal state, and the less distinct
ones after a bout of opium-smoking.”
“ That is perfectly sound reasoning,” said Thorn-
dyke. “ What further conclusion does it lead to? ”
“ It suggests that the opium habit had been only
recently acquired, since the change was noticed only
about the time he went to live at New Inn; and,
since the change in the writing is at ﬁrst intermittent
and then continuous, we may infer that the opium-
smoking was at ﬁrst occasional and later became a
a conﬁrmed habit.”
we “ Quite a reasonable conclusion and very clearly
stated,” said Thomdyke. “ I don’t say that I
entirely agree with you, or that you have exhausted
the information that these signatures offer. But
you have started in the right direction."
“ I may be on the right road,” I said gloomily;
“ but I am stuck fast in one place and I see no
chance of getting any farther.”


The Portrait 2 3 5


“ But you have a quantity of data,” said Thom-
dyke. “ You have all the facts that I had to start
with, from which I constructed the hypothesis that
I am now busily engaged in verifying. I have a
few more data now, for ‘ as money makes money '
sb 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? ”
I grasped eagerly at the offer, though I had
conned over my notes again and again.
Thorndyke produced a slip of paper from a drawer,
and, uncapping his fountain—pen, proceeded to write
down the leading facts, reading each aloud as soon
as it was written.
“ I. The second will was unnecessary since it con-
tained no new matter, expressed no new intentions
and met no new conditions, and the ﬁrst will was
quite clear and efﬁcient.
“ 2. The evident intention of the testator was
to leave the bulk of his property to Stephen Black-
more.
“ 3. The second will did not, under existing
circumstances, give effect to this intention, whereas
the ﬁrst will did.
“ 4. The signature of the second will diﬁers
slightly from that of the ﬁrst, and also from what
had hitherto been the testator’s ordinary sig-
nature.
“ And now we come to a very curious group of
dates, which I will advise you to consider with great
attention.


The Portrait 237


“ Nothing! ” I exclaimed desperately, slapping
the paper down on the table. “ Of course, I can
see that there are some queer coincidences. But
how do they bear on the case ? I understand that
you want to upset this will ; which we know to have
been signed without compulsion or even suggestion
in the presence of two respectable men, who have
sworn to the identity of the document. That is
your object, I believe? ”
“ Certainly it is.”
“ Then I am hanged if I see how you are going
to do it. Not, I should say, by offering a group of
vague coincidences that would muddle any brain but
your own.”
Thorndyke chuckled softly but pursued the
subject no farther.
" Put that paper in your ﬁle with your other
notes,” he said, “ and think it over at your leisure.
And now I want a little help from you. Have you
a. good memory for faces? ”
“ Fairly good, I think. Why? ”
" Because I have a photograph 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
handed 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’t, at the moment,
remember where.”
“ Try,” said Thorndyke. “ If you have seen the


240 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


to you if you think the matter over. But being
only a speculative opinion, at present, it would not
be safe to infer very much from it.”
“ You have rather taken me by surprise,” I
remarked. “ It seems that you have been working
at this Kennington case, and working pretty actively
I imagine, whereas I supposed that your entire
attention was taken up by the Blackmore
affair.”
“ It doesn’t do,” he replied, “ to allow one’s
entire attention to be taken up by any one case.
I have half a dozen others—minor cases, mostly—
to which I am attending at this moment. Did you
think I was proposing to keep you under lock and
key indeﬁnitely ? ”
“ Well, no. But I thought the Kennington case
would have to wait its turn. And I had no idea
that you were in possession of enough facts to enable}
you to get any farther with it.”
“ But you knew all the very striking facts of the
case, and you saw the further evidence that we
extracted from the empty house.”
“ Do you mean those things that we picked out
from the rubbish under the grate? ” =
“ Yes. You saw those curious little pieces of reed
and the pair of spectacles. They are lying in the
top drawer of that cabinet at this moment, and I
should recommend you to have another look at
them. To me they are most instructive. The
pieces of reed offered an extremely valuable sugges-
tion, and the spectacles enabled me to test that
suggestion and turn it into actual information.”


The Portrait 24 I


" Unfortunately,” said I, “ the pieces of reed
convey nothing to me. I don’t know what they are
or of what they have formed a part.”
" I think,” he replied, “ that if you examine
them with due consideration, you will ﬁnd their
use pretty obvious. Have a good look at them and
the spectacles too. Think over all that you know
of that mysterious group of people who lived in
that house, and see if you cannot form some coherent
theory of their actions. Think, also, if we have not
some information in our possession by which we
might be able to identify some of them, and infer
the identity of the others. You will have a quiet
day, as I shall not be home until the evening; set
yourself this task. I assure you that you have the
material for identifying—or rather for testing the
identity of—at least one of those persons. Go over
your material systematically, and let me know in
the evening what further investigations you would
propose.”
“ Very well,” said I. “ It shall be done according
to your word. I will addle my brain afresh with the
affair of Mr. Weiss and his patient, and let the
Blackmore case rip.”
“ There is no need to do that. You have a whole
day before you. An hour’s really close considera-
tion of the Kennington case ought to show you what
your next move should be, and then you could
devote yourself to the consideration of Jeffrey
Blackmore’s wi .”
“With this ﬁnal piece of advice, Thorndyke col-
lected the papers for his day’s work, and, having


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 24.3


wonder. He seemed to take in everything at a
single glance and in an instant to appreciate the
meaning of everything that he had seen.
Here was a case in point. I had myself seen all
that he had seen, and, indeed, much more; for I
had looked on the very people and witnessed their
actions, whereas he had never set eyes on any of
them. I had examined the little handful of rubbish
that he had gathered up so carefully, and would
have ﬂung it back under the grate without a qualm.
Not a 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 probably not even observed,
and that so completely that he had already, in these
few days, narrowed down the ﬁeld of inquiry to quite
a small area.
From these reﬂections I returned to the objects
on the table. The spectacles, as things of which I
had some expert knowledge, were not so profound
a mystery to me. A pair of spectacles might easily
afford good evidence for indentiﬁcation ; that I
perceived clearly enough. Not a ready-made pair,
picked up casually at a shop, but a pair constructed
by a skilled optician to remedy a particular defect
of vision and to ﬁt a particular face. And such were
the spectacles before me. The build of the frames
was peculiar; the existence of a cylindrical lens—
which I could easily make out from the remaining
fragments—showed that one glass had been cut to
a prescribed shape and almost certainly ground to a


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 245‘


the “fat line.” Could any of our friends be draughts-
men? This seemed the most probable solution of
the diﬁiculty, and the more I thought about it the
more likely it seemed. Draughtsmen usually sign
their work intelligibly, and even when they use a
device instead of a signature their identity is easily
traceable. Could it be that Mr. Graves, for instance,
was an illustrator, and, that Thorndyke had estab-
lished his identity by looking through the works of
all the well-known thick-line draughtsmen ? ”
This problem occupied me for the rest of the day.
My explanation did not seem quite to ﬁt Thorn-
dyke’s description of his methods; but I could
think of no other. I turned it over during my
solitary lunch; I meditated on it with the aid of
several pipes in the afternoon ; and having refreshed
my brain with a cup of tea, I went forth to walk in
the Temple gardens—which I was permitted to do
Without breaking my parole—t0 think it out
afresh.
The result was disappointing. I was basing my
reasoning on the assumption that the pieces of reed
were parts of a particular appliance, appertaining
to a particular craft; whereas they might be the
remains of something quite different, appertaining
to a totally different craft or to no craft at all. And
in no case did they point to any known individual
or indicate any but the vaguest kind of search.
After pacing the pleasant walks for upwards of two
hours, I at length turned back towards our chambers,
where I arrived as the lamp-lighter was just ﬁnishing
his round.


24.6 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


My fruitless speculations had left me somewhat
irritable. The lighted windows that I had noticed
as I approached had given me the impression that
Thomdyke had returned. I had intended to press
him for a little further information. When, there-
fore, I let myself into our chambers and found,
instead of my colleague, a total stranger—and only
a back view at that—I was disappointed and
annoyed.
The stranger was seated by the table, reading a
large document that looked like a lease. He made
no movement when I entered, but when I crossed
the room and wished him “ Good evening,” be half
rose and bowed silently. It was then that I ﬁrst
saw his face, and a mighty start he gave me. For
one moment I actually thought he was Mr. Weiss,
so close was the resemblance, but immediately I
perceived that he was a much smaller man.
I sat down nearly opposite and stole an occasional
furtive glance at him. The resemblance to Weiss
was really remarkable. The same ﬂaxen hair, the
same ragged beard and a similar red nose, with the
patches of acne rosacea spreading to the adjacent
cheeks. He wore spectacles, too, through which
he took a quick glance at me now and again,
returning immediately to his document.
- After some moments of rather embarrassing
silence, I ventured to remark that it was a mild
evening ; to which he assented with a sort of Scotch
“ Hm—hm ” and nodded slowly. Then came
another interval of silence, during which I specu-
lated on the possibility of his being a relative of


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 247


Mr. Weiss and wondered what the deuce he was
doing in our chambers.
“ Have you an appointment with Dr. Thom-
dyke ? ” I asked, at length.
He bowed solemnly, and by way of reply—in the
afﬁrmative, as I assumed—emitted another “ hm—
hm.”
I looked at him sharply, a little nettled by his lack
of manners ; whereupon he opened out the lease so
that it screened his face, and as I glanced at the back
of the document, I was astonished to observe that
it was shaking rapidly.
The fellow was actually laughing! What he
found in my simple question to cause him so much
amusement I was totally unable to imagine. But
there it was. The tremulous movements of the
document left me in no possible doubt that he was
for some reason convulsed with laughter.
It was extremely mysterious. Also, it was rather
embarrassing. I took dut my pocket ﬁle and began
to look over my notes. Then the document was
lowered and I was able to get another look at the
stranger’s face. He was really extraordinarily like
Weiss. The shaggy eyebrows, throwing the eye-
sockets into shadow, gave him, in conjunction with
the spectacles, the same owlish, solemn expression
that I had noticed in my Kennington acquaintance ;
and which, by the way, was singularly out of char-
acter with the frivolous behaviour that I had just
witnessed. w
From time to time as I looked at him, he caught
my eye and instantly averted his own, turning rather


250 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


that the eyes that beamed through the spectacles
were remarkably like the eyes of our factotum.
But the blotchy face, the bulbous nose and the
shaggy, overhanging eyebrows were alien features
that I could not reconcile with the personality of
our reﬁned and aristocratic-looking little assistant.
“ Is this a practical joke? " I asked.
" No,” replied Thomdyke; “ it is a demonstra-
tion. When we were talking this morning it
appeared to me that you did not realize the extent
to which it is possible to conceal identity under
suitable conditions of light. So I arranged, with
Polton’s rather reluctant assistance, to give you
ocular evidence. The conditions are not favourable
—which makes the demonstration more convincing.
This is a very well-lighted room and Polton is a very
poor actor; in spite of which it has been possible
for you to sit opposite him for several minutes and
look at him, I have no doubt, very attentively,
without discovering his identity. If the room had
been lighted only with a candle, and Polton had
been equal to the task of supporting his make—up
with an appropriate voice and manner, the deception
would have been perfect.”
“ I can see that he has a wig on, quite plainly,”
said I.
“ Yes; but you would not in a dimly lighted
room. On the other hand, if Polton were to walk
down Fleet Street at mid-day in this condition, the
make-up would be conspicuously evident to any
moderately observant passer-by. The secret of
making up consists in a careful adjustment to the


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 251


conditions of light and distance in which the make-
up is to be seen. That in use on the stage would
look ridiculous in an ordinary room; that which
would serve in an artiﬁcially lighted room would
look ridiculous out of doors by daylight.”
“ Is any effective make—up possible out of doors
in ordinary daylight? ” I asked.
“ Oh, yes," replied Thorndyke. " But it must
be on a totally different scale from that of the stage.
A wig, and especially a beard or moustache, must be
joined up at the edges with hair actually stuck on
the skin with transparent cement and carefully
trimmed with scissors. The same applies to eye—
brows; and alterations in the colour of the skin
must be carried out much more subtly. Polton’s nose
has been built up with a small covering of toupée-
paste, the pimples on the cheeks produced with
little particles of the same material ; and the general
tinting has been done with grease—paint with a very
light scumble of powder colour to take off some of
the shine. This would be possible in outdoor
make-up, but it would have to be done with the
greatest care and delicacy; in fact, with what the
art-critics call ‘ reticence.’ A very little make-up is
sufﬁcient and too much is fatal. You would be
surprised to see how little paste is required to alter
the shape of the nose and the entire character of
the face.”
At this moment there came a. loud knock at the
door; a single, solid dab of the knocker which
Polton seemed to recognize, for he ejaculated:
“ Good lord, sir! That’ll be Wilkins, the cab-


2 52 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


manl I’d forgotten all about him. Whatever’s
to be done? ”
He stared at us in ludicrous horror for a moment
or two, and then, snatching off his wig, beard and
spectacles, poked them into a cupboard. But his
appearance was now too much even for Thomdyke
—who hastily got behind him—for he had now
resumed his ordinary personality—but with a very
material difference.
“ Oh, it’s nothing to laugh at, sir,” he exclaimed
indignantly as I crammed my handkerchief into my
mouth. “ Somebody’s got to let him in, or he’ll go
away.” \
“ Yes; and that won’t do,” said Thomdyke.
" But don’t worry, Polton. You can step into the
ofﬁce. I’ll open the door.”
Polton’s presence of mind, however, seemed to
have entirely forsaken him, for he only hovered
irresolutely in the wake of his principal. As the
door opened, a thick and husky voice inquired:
“ Gent of the name of Polton live here? ”
“ Yes, quite right,” said Thomdyke. “ Come in.
Your name is Wilkins, I think? ”
“ That’s me, sir,” said the voice ; and in response
to Thorndyke’s invitation, a typical “ growler ”
cabman of the old school, complete even to imbri-
cated cape and dangling badge, stalked into the
room, and glancing round with a mixture of
embarrassment and deﬁance, suddenly ﬁxed on
Polton’s nose a look of devouring curiosity.
“ Here you are, then,” Polton remarked ner-
vously.


2 54 The Mystery of 31, New Inn

“ Your name, I think, is Wilkins? ” said Thorn-
dyke.
“ That’s me, sir. Samuel Wilkins is my name.”
“ And your occupation? ”
“ Is a very tryin’ one and not paid for as it
deserves. I drives a cab, sir; a four-wheeled cab \
is what I drives ; and a very poor job it is.”
“ Do you happen to remember a very foggy day
about a month ago?”
“ Do I not, sir! A regler sneezer that was!
Wednesday, the fourteenth of March. I remember
the date because my beneﬁt society came down on
me for arrears that morning.”
“ Will you tell us what happened to you between
six and seven in the evening of that day? ”
“ I will, sir,” replied the cabman, emptying his
tumbler by way of bracing himself up for the effort.
“ A little before six I was waiting on the arrival
side of the Great Northern Station, King’s Cross,
when I see a gentleman and a lady coming out.
The gentleman he looks up and down and then he
sees me and walks up to the cab and opens the door
and helps the lady in. Then he says to me: ‘ Do
you know New Inn?’ he says. That’s what he
says to me what was born and brought up in White
Horse Alley, Drury Lane.
“ ‘ Get inside,’ says I.
“ ‘ Well,’ says he, ‘ you drive in through the gate
in Wych Street,’ he says, as if he expected me to
go in by Houghton Street and down the steps,
‘ and then,’ he says, ‘ you drive nearly to the end
and you’ll see a house with a large brass plate at


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 257


“ Do you want me to swear a afﬁdavy that it’s
all true? ” asked Wilkins.
“ No, thank you,” replied Thorndyke. “ We
may have to call you to give evidence in court, and
then you’ll be sworn; and you’ll also be paid for
your attendance. For the present I want you to
keep your own counsel and say nothing to anybody
about having been here. We have to make some
other inquiries and we don’t want the affair talked
about.”
“ I see, sir,” said Wilkins, as he laboriously traced
his signature at the foot of the statement; “ you
don’t want the other parties for to ogle your lay.
All right, sir; you can depend on me. I’m ﬂy, I
am.”
“ Thank you, Wilkins,” said Thorndyke. “ And
now what are we to give you for your trouble in
coming here? "
“ I’ll leave the fare to you, sir. You know what
the information’s worth; but I should think ’arf
a thick-un wouldn’t hurt you.”
Thorndyke laid on the table a couple of sovereigns,
at the sight of which the cabman’s eyes glistened.
“ We have your address, Wilkins,” said he. “ If
we want you as a witness we shall let you know, and
if not, there will be another two pounds for you at
the end of a fortnight, provided you have not let
this little interview leak out.”
Wilkins gathered up the spoils gleefully. “ You
can trust me, sir,” said he, “ for to keep my mouth
shut. I knows which side my bread’s buttered.
Good night, gentlemen all.”
9


258 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


With this comprehensive salute he moved towards
the door and let himself out.
“ Well, Jervis ; what do you think of it ? ”
Thomdyke asked, as the cabman’s footsteps faded
away in a creaky diminuendo.
“ I don’t know what to think. This woman is a
new factor in the case and I don’t know how to
place her.”
“ Not entirely new,” said Thomdyke. “ You
have not forgotten those beads that we found in
Jeffrey’s bedroom, have you? ”
“ No, I had not forgotten them, but I did not see
that they told us much excepting that some woman
had apparently been in his bedroom at some time.”
“ That, I think, is all that they did tell us. But
now they tell us that a particular woman was in his
bedroom at a particular time, which is a good deal
more signiﬁcant.”
“ Yes. It almost looks as if she must have been
there when he made away with himse .”
“ It does, very much.”
“ By the way, you were right about the colours
of those beads, and also about the way they were
used.”
“ As to their use, that was a mere guess ; but it
has turned out to be correct. It was well that we
found the beads, for, small as is the amount of
information they give, it is still enough to carry us
a stage further.”
“ How so ? ”
“ I mean that the cabman’s evidence tells us only
that this woman entered the house. The beads tell


The Statement of Samuel Wilkins 2 59


us that she was in the bedroom ; which, as you say,
seems to connect her to some extent with Jeffrey’s
death. " Not necessarily, of course. It is only a
suggestion; but a rather strong suggestion under
the peculiar circumstances.”
“ Even so,” said I, “ this new fact seems to me
so far from clearing up the mystery, only to add to
it a fresh element of still deeper mystery. The
porter’s evidence at the inquest could leave no doubt
that Jeffrey contemplated suicide, and his prepara-
tions pointedly suggest this particular night as the
time selected by him for doing away with himself.
Is not that so? ”
“ Certainly. The porter’s evidence was very
clear on that point.”
“ Then I don’t see where this woman comes in.
It is obvious that her presence _at the inn, and
especially in the bedroom, on this occasion and in
these strange, secret circumstances, has a rather
sinister look ; but yet I do not see in what way she
could have been connected with the tragedy.
Perhaps, after all, she has nothing to do with it.
You remember that Jeffrey went to the lodge about
eight o’clock, to pay his rent, and chatted for some
time with the porter. That looks as if the lady
had already left.”
“ Yes,” said Thorndyke. “ But, on the other
hand, Jeffrey’s remarks to the porter with reference
to the cab do not quite agree with the account that
we have just heard from Wilkins. Which suggests
-—as does Wilkins’s account generally—some secrecy
as to the lady’s visit to his chambers.”


262 The Mystery of 31, New Inn

e

as plainly to suicide as before her appearance.
Jeffrey’s repeated hints as to his intentions, and the
very signiﬁcant preparations that he had made, were
enough to negative any idea of foul play. And yet
the woman’s presence in the chambers at that time,
the secret manner of her arrival and her precautions
against recognition, strongly suggested some kind of
complicity in the dreadful event that followed.
But what complicity is possible in the case of
suicide? The woman might have furnished him
with the syringe and the poison, but it would not
have been necessary for her to go to his chambers
for that purpose. Vague ideas of persuasion and
hypnotic suggestion ﬂoated through my brain ; but
the explanations did not ﬁt the case and the hypnotic
suggestion of crime is not very convincing to the
medical mind. Then I thought of blackmail in con-
nection with some disgraceful secret; but though
this was a more hopeful suggestion, it was not very
probable, considering Jeffrey’s age and character.
And all these speculations failed to throw the
faintest light on the main question: “ Who was
this woman ? ”
A couple of days passed, during which Thomdyke
made no further reference to the case. He was, most
of the time, away from home, though how he was
engaged I had no idea. What was rather more
unusual was that Polton seemed to have deserted
the laboratory and taken to outdoor pursuits. I
assumed that he had seized the opportunity of
leaving me in charge, and I dimly surmised that he
was acting as Thomdyke’s private inquiry agent,


Thorndyke Lays the Mine 263


as he seemed to have done in the case of Samuel
Wilkins.
On the evening of the second day Thorndyke
came home in obviously good spirits, and his ﬁrst
proceedings aroused my expectant curiosity. He
went to a cupboard and brought forth a box of
Trichinopoly cheroots. Now the Trichinopoly
cheroot was Thorndyke’s one dissipation, to be
enjoyed only on rare and specially festive occasions ;
which, in practice, meant those occasions on which
he had scored some important point or solved some
unusually tough problem. Wherefore I watched
him with lively interest. ‘
“ It’s a pity that the ‘ Trichy ’ is such a poisonous
beast,” he remarked, taking up one of the cheroots
and snifﬁng at it delicately. “ There is no other
cigar like it, to a really abandoned smoker.” He
laid the cigar back in the box and continued: “ I
think I shall treat myself to one after dinner to cele-
brate the occasion.”
“ What occasion? ” I asked.
“ The completion of the Blackmore case. I am
just going to write to Marchmont advising him to
enter a caveat.”
“ Do you mean to say that you have discovered
a ﬂaw in the will, after all? ” .
“ A ﬂaw ! ” he exclaimed. “ My dear Jervis, that
second will is a forgery.”
I stared at him in amazement ; for his assertion
sounded like nothing more or less than arrant
nonsense.
“ But the thing is impossible, Thorndyke,” I said.


264 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ Not only did the witnesses recognize their own
signatures and the painter’s greasy ﬁnger-marks, but
they had both read the will and remembered its
contents.”
“ Yes ; that is the interesting feature in the case.
It is a very pretty problem. I shall give you a last
chance to solve it. To-morrow evening we shall
have to give a full explanation, so you have another
twenty-four hours in which to think it over. And,
meanwhile, I am going to take you to my club to
dine. I think we shall be pretty safe there from
Mrs. Schallibaum.”
He sat down and wrote a letter, which was
apparently quite a short one, and having addressed
and stamped it, prepared to go out.
“ Come,” said he, “ let us away to ‘ the gay and
festive scenes and halls of dazzling light.’ We will
lay the mine in the Fleet Street pillar box. I
should like to be in Marchmont’s ofﬁce when it
explodes.”
“ I expect, for that matter,” said I, “ that the
explosion will be felt pretty distinctly in these
chambers.”
“ I expect so, too,” replied Thomdyke; “and
that reminds me that I shall be out all day to-
morrow, so, if Marchmont calls, you must do all
that you can to persuade him to come round after
dinner and bring Stephen Blackmore, if possiblew I
am anxious to have Stephen here, as he will be able
to give us some further information and conﬁrm
certain matters of fact.”
I promised to exercise my utmost powers of


266 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


Control yourself, I beg you. But really, the letter
is rather incomprehensible. It relates to the will of
the late Jeffrey Blackmore—you know the main facts
of the case ; and we cannot 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.”
I took up the letter and read aloud:
“ JEFFREY BLACKMORE, DECD.
“ DEAR MR. MARCHMONT,——
“ I have gone into this case with great care
and have now no doubt that the second will is a
forgery. Criminal proceedings will, I think, be
inevitable, but meanwhile it would be wise to enter
a caveat.
“ If you could look in at my chambers to-morrow
evening we could talk the case over; and I should
be glad if you could bring Mr. Stephen Blackmore ;
Whose personal knowledge of the events and the
parties concerned would be of great assistance in
clearing up obscure details.
“ I am,
“ Yours sincerely,
" JOHN EVELYN THORNDYKE.
" C. F. MARCHMONT, Esg.”
" Well] ” exclaimed Mr. Winwood, glaring feroci-


268 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


And, of course, if what he says is correct, Mr.
Stephen’s position is totally changed.”
“ Bah l ” exclaimed Winwood, “ he has found
a mare’s nest, I tell you. Still, I agree that the
explanation should be worth hearing.”
“ You mustn’t mind Winwood,” said March-
mont, in an apologetic undertone ; “ he’s a peppery
old fellow with a rough tongue, but he doesn’t
mean any harm.” Which statement Winwood
assented to—or dissented from; for it was im-
possible to say which—by a prolonged growl.
“ We shall expect you then,” I said, “ about
eight to-night, and you will try to bring Mr. Stephen
with you ? ”
“ Yes," replied Marchmont ; “ I think we can
promise that he shall come with us. I have sent
him a telegram asking him to attend.”
With this the two lawyers took their departure,
leaving me to meditate upon my colleague’s astonish-
ing statement; which I did, considerably to the
prejudice of other employment. That Thomdyke
would be able to justify the opinion that he had
given, I had no doubt whatever; but yet there was
no denying that his proposition was what Mr. Dick
Swiveller would call “ a staggerer.”
When Thorndyke returned, I informed him of
the visit of our two friends, and acquainted him
with the sentiments that they had expressed;
whereat he smiled with quiet amusement.
“ I thought,” he remarked, “that letter would
bring Marchmont to our door before long. As to
Winwood, I have never met him, but I gather that


Thorndyke Lays the Mine 269


he is one of those people whom you ‘ mustn’t mind.’
In a general way, I object to people who tacitly
claim exemption from the ordinary rules of conduct
that are held to be binding on their fellows. But,
as he promises to give us what the variety artists
call ' an extra turn,’ we will make the best of him
and give him a run for his money.”
Here Thorndyke smiled mischievously—I under-
stood the meaning of that smile later in the evening
—and asked: “ What do you think of the affair
yourself ? ”
“ I have given it up,” I answered. “To my
paralysed brain, the Blackmore case is like an
endless algebraical problem propounded by an
insane mathematician.”
Thorndyke laughed at my comparison, which I
ﬂatter myself was a rather apt one.
“ 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. I think the
old ‘ Bell ’ in Holbom will meet our present require-
ments better than the club. There is something
jovial and roystering about an ancient tavern ;
but we must keep a sharp lookout for Mrs. Schalli-
baum.”
Thereupon we set forth; and, after a week’s
close imprisonment, I once more looked upon the
friendly London streets, the cheerftu lighted
shop windows and the multitudes of companionable
strangers who moved unceasingly along the pave-
ments.


ChaPter XV Thomdyke Explodes the Aline

E had not been back in our chambers more
than a few minutes when the little brass
knocker on the inner door rattled out its summons.
Thomdyke himself opened the door, and, ﬁnding
our three expected visitors on the threshold, he
admitted them and closed the “ oak.”
“ We have accepted your invitation, you see,”
said Marchmont, whose manner was now a little
ﬂurried and uneasy. “ This is my partner, Mr.
Winwood ; you haven’t met before, I think. Well,
we thought we should like to hear some further
particulars from you, as we could not quite under-
stand your letter.”
“ My conclusion, I suppose,” said Thomdyke,
" was a little unexpected? ”
“ It was more than that, sir,” exclaimed Win-
wood. “ It was absolutely irreconcilable either
with the facts of the case or with common physical
possibilities.”
“ At the ﬁrst glance,” Thomdyke agreed, “ it
would probably have that appearance.”
“ It has that appearance still to me.” said Win-
wood, growing suddenly red and wrathful, “ and I
may say that I speak as a solicitor who was practising
in the law when you were an infant in arms. You
tell us, sir, that this will is a forgery ; this will, which
was executed in broad daylight in the presence of
two unimpeachable witnesses who have sworn, not
270


272 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


who shuts himself up and turns the key; and so
remained—excepting when the internal pressure
approached bursting-point—throughout the sub-
sequent proceedings, silent, stony and impassive,
like a seated statue of Obstinacy.
“ I take it,” said Marchmont, “ that you have
some new facts that are not in our possession ? ”
“ Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “ we have some new
facts, and we have made some new use of the old
ones. But how shall I lay the case before you?
Shall I state my theory of the sequence of events
and furnish the veriﬁcation afterwards? Or shall
I 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? ”
“ I almost think,” said Mr. Marchmont, “ that
it would be better if you would put us in possession
of the new facts. Then, if the conclusions that
follow from them are not sufﬁciently obvious, we
could hear the argument. What do you say,
Winwood ? ”
Mr. Winwood roused himself for an instant,
barked out the one word “ Facts,” and shut himself
up again with a snap.
“ You would like to have the new facts by them-
selves ? ” said Thomdyke.
“ If you please. The facts only, in the ﬁrst place,
at any rate.”
“ Very well,” said Thomdyke ; and here I caught
his eye with a mischievous twinkle in it that I
understood perfectly; for I had most of the facts
myself and realized how much these two lawyers


T horndyke Explodes the Mine 27 5


“ I haven’t asserted it,” answered Thorndyke.
“ My position is that the will is a forgery.”
“ But it is not,” said Winwood.
" We won’t argue it now,” said Thorndyke. “ I
ask you to note the fact that the inscription was
upside down. I also observed on the walls of
the chambers some valuable Japanese colour-
prints on which were recent damp-spots. I noted
that the sitting-room had a gas-stove arid that the
kitchen contained practically no stores or remains
of food and hardly any traces of even the simplest
cooking. In the bedroom I found a large box
that had contained a considerable stock of hard
stearine candles, six to the pound, and that was
now nearly empty. I examined the clothing of
the deceased. On the soles of the boots I observed
dried mud, which was unlike that on my own and
Jervis’s boots, from the gravelly square of the inn.
I noted a crease on each leg of the deceased man’s
trousers as if they had been turned up half-wayto
the knee ; and in the waistcoat pocket I found the
stump of a ‘ Contango ’ pencil. On the ﬂoor of the
bedroom, I found a portion of an oval glass some-
what like that of a watch or locket, but ground at
the edge to a double bevel. Dr. Jervis and I also
found one or two heads and a bugle, all of dark
brown glass.”
Here Thorndyke paused, and Marchmont, who
had been gazing at him with growing amazement,
said nervously:
“ Er—yes. Very interesting. These observa-
tions of yours—er—are—”


276 The Mystery qf 31, New Inn


“ Are all the observations that I made at New
Inn.”
The two lawyers looked at one another and
Stephen Blackmore stared ﬁxedly at a spot on
the hearth-rug. Then Mr. Winwood’s face con-
torted itself into a sour, lopsided smile.
“ You might have observed a good many other
things, sir," said he, “ if you had looked. If you
had examined the doors, you would have noted
that they had hinges and were covered with paint ;
and, if you had looked up the chimney you might
have noted that it was black inside.”
“ Now, now, Winwood,” protested Marchmont
in an agony of uneasiness as to what his partner
might say next, “ I must really beg you—er—to
refrain from—what Mr. Winwood means, Dr.
Thomdyke, is that—er—we do not quite perceive
the relevancy of these——ah——observations of yours.”
“ Probably not,” said Thomdyke, “ but you
will perceive their relevancy later. For the present,
I will ask you to note the facts and bear them in
mind, so that you may be able to follow the argu-
ment when we come to that.
“ The next set of data I acquired on the same
evening, when Dr. Jervis gave me a detailed account
of a very strange adventure that befell him. I need
not burden you with all the details, but I will give
you the substance of his story.”
He then proceeded to recount the incidents con-
nected with my visits to Mr. Graves, dwelling on
the personal peculiarities of the parties concerned
and especially of the patient, and not even for-


Thorndyke Explodes the Mine 279


cement such as is used for ﬁxing on false beards,
moustaches or eyebrows.”
He paused once more and looked round expect-
antly at his audience, none of whom, however,
volunteered any remark.
“ Do none of these objects that I have described
and shown you, seem to have any signiﬁcance for
us? ” he asked, in a tone of some surprise.
“ They convey nothing to me,” said Mr. March-
mont, glancing at his partner, who shook his head
like a restive horse.
“ Nor to you, Mr. Stephen? ”
“ No,” replied Stephen. “ Under the existing
circumstances they convey no reasonable suggestion
to me.”
Thorndyke hesitated as if he were half inclined
to say something more ; then, with a slight shrug,
he turned over his notes and resumed :
“ The next group of new facts is concerned with
the signatures of the recent cheques. We have
photographed them and placed them together for
the purpose of comparison and analysis.”
“ I am not prepared to question the signatures.”
said Winwood. “ We have had a highly exPert
opinion, which would override ours in a court of
law even if we differed from it ; which I think we
do not.”
“ Yes,” said Marchmont; “ that is so. I think
we must accept the signatures, especially as that
of the will has been proved, beyond any question,
to be authentic.”
“ Very well,” agreed Thorndyke; “ we will pass


280 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


over the signatures. Then we have some further
evidence in regard to the spectacles, which serves
to verify our conclusions respecting them."
“ Perhaps,” said Marchmont, “ we might pass
over that, too, as we do not seem to have reached
any conclusions."
“ As you please,” said Thomdyke. “ It is im-
portant, but we can reserve it for veriﬁcation. The
next item will interest you more, I think. It is the
signed and witnessed statement of Samuel Wilkins,
the driver of the cab in which the deceased came
home to the inn on the evening of his death.”
My colleague was right. An actual document,
signed by a tangible witness, who could be put in
the box and sworn, brought both lawyers to a
state of attention; and when Thomdyke read out
the cabman’s evidence, their attention soon quick-
ened into undisguised astonishment.
“ But this is a most mysterious affair,” exclaimed
Marchmont. “ Who could this woman have been,
and what could she have been doing in Jeffrey’s
chambers at this time? Can you throw any light
on it, Mr. Stephen?”
“ No, indeed I can’t,” replied Stephen. “ It is
a complete mystery to me. My uncle Jeffrey was
a conﬁrmed old bachelor, and, although he did not
dislike women, he was far from partial to their
society, wrapped up as he was in his favourite
‘ studies. To the best of my belief, he had not a
single female friend. He was not on intimate terms
even with his sister, Mrs. Wilson.”
“ Very remarkable,” mused Marchmont; “ most


Thorndyke Explodes the Mine 4 281


remarkable. But, perhaps, you can tell us, Dr.
Thorndyke, who this woman was? ”
“ I think,” replied Thorndyke, “ that the next
item of evidence will enable you to form an opinion
for yourselves. I only obtained it yesterday, and,
as it made my case quite complete, I wrote off to
you immediately. It is the statement of Joseph
Ridley, another cabman, and unfortunately, a
rather dull, unobservant fellow, unlike Wilkins.
He has not much to tell us, but what little he has
is highly instructive. Here is the statement, signed
by the deponent and witnessed by me:
“ ‘ My name is Joseph Ridley. I am the driver
of a four-wheeled cab. On the fourteenth of March,
the day of the great fog, I was waiting at Vauxhall
Station, where I had just set down a fare. About
ﬁve o’clock a lady came and told me to drive over to
Upper Kennington Lane to take up a passenger.
She was a middle-sized woman. I could not tell
what her age was, or what she was like, because her
head was wrapped up in a sort of knitted, woollen
veil to keep out the fog. I did not notice how she
was dressed. She got into the cab and I led the
horse over to Upper Kennington Lane and a little
way up the lane, until the lady tapped at the front
window for me to stop.
“ ‘She got out of the cab and told me to wait.
Then she went away and disappeared in the fog.
Presently a lady and gentleman came from the
direction in which she had gone. The lady looked
like the same lady, but I won’t answer to that.
Her head was wrapped up in the same kind of veil


282 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


or shawl, and I noticed that she had on a dark
coloured mantle with bead fringe on it.
“ ‘ The gentleman was clean shaved and wore
spectacles, and he stooped a good deal. I can’t
say whether his sight was good or bad. He helped
the lady into the cab and told me to drive to the
Great Nothern Station, King’s Cross. Then he
got in himself and I drove off. I got to the station
about a quarter to six and the lady and gentleman
got out. The gentleman paid my fare and they
both went into the station. I did not notice any-
thing unusual about either of them. Directly after
they had gone, I got a fresh fare and drove
away.’
‘ “ That,” Thomdyke concluded, “ is Joseph
Ridley’s statement ; and I think it will enable you
to give a meaning to the other facts that I have
offered for your consideration.”
“ I am not so sure about that,” said Marchmont.
“ It is all exceedingly mysterious. Your sugges-
tion is, of course, that the woman who came to
New Inn in the cab was Mrs. Schallibaum ! ”
“ Not at all,” replied Thomdyke. “ My sugges-
tion is that the woman was Jeffrey Black-
more.”
There was deathly silence for a few moments.
We were all absolutely thunderstruck, and sat gaping
at Thomdyke in speechless-astonishment. Then—
Mr. Winwood fairly bounced out of his chair.
“ But—my—good—sirl ” he screeched. “ Jeﬁ-
rey Blackmore was with her at the time ! ”
“ Naturally,” replied Thomdyke, “ my sugges-


Thorndyke Explodes the Mine 28 3


tion implies that the person who was with her was
not Jeffrey Blackmore.”
“ But he was ! ” bawled Winwood. “ The porter
saw him ! ”
“ The porter saw a person whom he believed to
be Jeffrey Blackmore. I suggest that the porter’s
belief was erroneous.”
“ Well,” snapped Winwood, “ perhaps you can
prove that it was. I don’t see how you are going
to; but perhaps you can.”
He subsided once more into his chair and glared
deﬁantly at Thorndyke.
“ You seemed,” said Stephen, “ to suggest some
connection between the sick man, Graves, and my
uncle. I noted it at the time, but put it aside as
impossible. Was I right. Did you mean to suggest
any connection ? ”
“ I suggest something more than a connection.
I suggest identity. My position is that, the sick
man, Graves, was your uncle.”
“ From Dr. Jervis’s description,” said Stephen,
" this man must have been very like my uncle.
Both were blind in the right eye and had very poor
vision with the left; and my uncle certainly used
brushes of the kind that you have shown us,
when writing in the Japanese character, for I
have watched him and admired his skill;
but—"
“ But,” said Marchmont, “ there is the insuper-
able objection that, at the very time when this
man was lying sick in Kennington Lane, Mr. Jeffrey
was living at New Inn.”


284 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


“ What evidence is there of that ? ” asked Thom-
dyke.
“ Evidence l ” Marchmont exclaimed impatiently.
“ Why, my dear sir—”
He paused suddenly, and, leaning forward,
regarded Thomdyke with a new and rather startled
expression.
“ You mean to suggest ” he began.
“ I suggest that Jeffrey Blackmore never lived
at New Inn at all.”
For the moment, Marchmont seemed absolutely
paralysed by astonishment.
" This is an amazing proposition I ” he exclaimed,
at length. “ Yet the thing is certainly not im-
possible, for, now that you recall the fact, I realize
that no one who had known him previously—
excepting his brother, John—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, 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 ? ”
“ Certainly not," replied Thomdyke.
Here Mr. Winwood grasped his hair with both
hands and stuck his elbows on his knees, while
Marchmont drew forth a large handkerchief and
mopped his forehead. Stephen Blackmore looked
from one to the other expectantly, and ﬁnally
said:


286 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


matter; it expressed no changed intenqtions; it met
no new circumstances, as known to ‘the testator.
In short it was not really a new will at all, but
merely a'hepetition of the ﬁrst one, drafted in
different and less suitable language; It [differed
only in introducing a certain ambiguity from which
the original was free. It created the possibility
that, in certain circumstances, not known to or
anticipated by the testator, John Blackmore might
become the principal beneﬁciary, contrary to the
obvious wishes of the testator.
“ The next point that impressed me was the
manner of Mrs. Wilson’s death. She died of cancer.
Now people do not die suddenly and unexpectedly
of cancer. This terrible disease stands almost alone
in that it marks out its victim months in advance.
A person who has an incurable cancer is a person
whose death may be predicted with certainty and
its date ﬁxed within comparatively narrow limits.
“ And now observe the remarkable series of coin-
cidences that are brought into light when we con-
sider this peculiarity of the disease. Mrs. Wilson
died on the twelfth of March of this present year.
Mr. Jeffrey’s second will was signed on the twelfth
of November of last year ; 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 any of her relatives who chose to inquire after
her.
“ Then you will observe that the remarkable
change in Mr. Jeffrey’s habits coincides in the most
singular way with the same events. The cancer


288 The Mystery of 31, New Inn

his death. Then Mrs. Wilson’s next of kin would
certainly have contested John Blackmore’s claim—
and probably with success—on the ground that
Jeffrey died before Mrs. Wilson. But all this un-
certainty is provided for by the circumstance that
Mr. Jeffrey paid his rent personally—and prema-
turely—to the porter on the fourteenth of March,
thus establishing beyond question the fact that he
was alive on that date ; and yet further, in case the
porter’s memory should be untrustworthy or his
statement doubted, Jeffrey furnished a signed and
dated document—the cheque—which could be pro-
duced in a court to furnish incontestable proof of
survival.
“ To sum up this part of the evidence. Here
was a will which enabled John Blackmore to inherit
the fortune of a man who, almost certainly, had no
intention of bequeathing it to him. The wording
of that will seemed to be adjusted to the peculiarities
of Mrs. Wilson’s disease; and the death of the
testator occurred under a peculiar set of circum-
stances which seemed to be exactly adjusted to
the wording of the will. Or, to put it in another
way: the wording of the will and the time, the
manner and the circumstances of the testator’s
death, all seemed to be precisely adjusted to the
fact that the approximate date of Mrs. Wilson’s
death was known some months before it occurred.
“ Now you must admit that this compound group
of coincidences, all conspiring to a single end—the
enrichment of John Blackmore—has a very singular
appearance. Coincidences are common enough in

I


292 The Mystery 0f 31, New Inn


in the room, and a gas stove has at least the virtue
of preserving a dry atmosphere. It was winter
weather, when the stove would naturally be pretty
constantly alight. How came the walls to be so
damp? The answer seemed to be that the stove
had not been constantly alight, but had been lighted
only occasionally. This suggestion was borne out
by a further examination of the rooms. In the
kitchen there were practically no stores and hardly
any arrangements even for simple bachelor cook-
ing; the bedroom offered the same suggestion;
the soap in the wash-stand was shrivelled and
cracked ; there was no cast-off linen, and the shirts
in the drawers, though clean, had the peculiar
yellowish, faded appearance that linen acquires
when long out of use. In short, the rooms had the
appearance of not having been lived in at all, but
only visited at intervals.
“ Against this view, however, was the statement
of the night porter that he had often seen a light in
Jeffrey’s sitting-room at one o’clock in the morning,
with the apparent implication that it was then
turned out. Now a light may be left in an empty
room, but its extinction implies the presence of some
person to extinguish it; unless some automatic
device be adopted for putting it out at a given time.
Such a device—the alarm movement of a clock, for
instance, with a suitable attachment—is a simple
enough matter, but my search of the rooms failed
to discover anything of the kind However, when
looking over the drawers in the bedroom, I came
upon a large box that had held a considerable


dn Exposition and a Tragedy 293


quantity of hard stearine candles. There were only
a few left, but a ﬂat candlestick with numerous
wick-ends in its socket accounted for the remainder.
“ These candles seemed to dispose of the difﬁculty.
They were not necessary for ordinary lighting, since
gas was laid on in all three rooms. For what purpose,
then, were they used, and in such considerable
quantities? I subsequently obtained some of the
same brand—Price’s stearine candles, six to the
pound—and experimented with them. Each candle
was seven and a quarter inches in length, not c0unt-
ing the cone at the top, and I found that they burned
in still air at the rate of a fraction over one inch in an
hour. We may say that one of these candles would
burn in still air a little over six hours. It would thus
be possible for the person who inhabited these rooms
to go away at seven o’clock in the evening and leave a
light which would burn until past one in the morning
and then extinguish itself. This, of course, was only
surmise, but it destroyed the signiﬁcance of the night
porter’s statement.
“ But, if the person who inhabited these chambers
was not Jeffrey, who was he?
“ The answer to that question seemed plain
enough. There was only one person who had a
strong motive for perpetrating a fraud of this kind,
and there was only one person to whom it was
possible. If this person was not Jeffrey, he must
have been very like Jeffrey ; sufﬁciently like for
the body of the one to be mistaken for the body of
the other. For the production of Jeffrey’s body
was an essential part of the plan and must have


dn Exposition and a Tragedy " 297


should make the production of his body necessary.
But if he was producible, his person must have
been in the possession or control of John. He could
not have been at large, for that would have involved
the danger of his being seen and recognized. He
could not have been in any institution or place
where he would be in contact with strangers. Then
he must be in some sort of conﬁnement. But it is
difﬁcult to keep an adult in conﬁnement in an
ordinary house. Such a proceeding would involve
great risk of discovery and the use of violence which
would leave traces on the body, to be observed and
commented on at the inquest. What alternative
method could be suggested?
“ The most obvious method is that of keeping
the prisoner in such a state of debility as would
conﬁne him to his bed. But such debility could be
produced by only starvation, unsuitable food, or
chronic poisoning. Of these alternatives, poisoning
is much more exact, more calculable in its effect
and more under control. The probabilities, then,
were in favour of chronic poisoning.
“ Having reached this stage, I recalled a singular
case which Jervis had mentioned to me and which
seemed to illustrate this method. On our retiun
home I asked him for further particulars, and he
then gave me a very detailed description of the
patient and the circumstances. The upshot was
rather startling. I had looked on his case as merely
illustrative, and wished to study it for the sake of
the suggestions that it might offer. But when I
had heard his account, I began to suspect that


An Exposition and a Tragedy 299


let. The birds had ﬂown, and we failed to discover
whither they had gone.
“ However, we entered the house and explored.
I have told you about the massive bolts and fasten-
ings that we found on the bedroom doors and
window, showing that the room had been used as
a prison. I have told you of the objects that we
picked out of the dust-heap under the grate. Of
the obvious suggestion offered by the Japanese
brush and the bottle of ‘ spirit gum ’ or cement, I
need not speak now ; but I must trouble you with
some details concerning the broken spectacles.
For here we had come upon the crucial fact to which,
as I have said, all sound inductive reasoning brings
one sooner or later.
“ The spectacles were of a rather peculiar pattern.
The frames were of the tyPe invented by Mr. Stop-
ford of Moorﬁelds and known by his name. The
right eye-piece was ﬁtted with plain glass, as is
usual in the case of a blind, or useless, eye. It was
very much shattered, but its character was obvious.
The glass of the left eye was much thicker and
fortimately less damaged, so that I was able accur-
ater to test its refraction.
“ When I reached home, I laid the pieces of the
spectacles together, measured the frames very care—
fully, tested the left eye-glass, and wrote down a.
' full description such as would have been given by
the surgeon to the spectacle-maker. Here it is,
and I will ask you to note it carefully.
“ ‘ Spectacles for constant use. Steel frame,
Stopford’s pattern, curl sides, broad bridge with


300 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


gold lining. Distance between centres, 6-2 centi-.
metres; extreme length of side-bars, 13-3 centi-
metres.
“ ‘ Right eye plain glass.
“ ‘ Left eye— 5-75 D. spherical
-3-25 D. cylindrical, axis 35°.’
“ The spectacles, you see, were of a very dis-
tinctive character and seemed to offer a good chance
of identiﬁcation. Stopford’s frames are, I believe,
made by only one ﬁrm of opticians in London,
Parry & Cuxton of Regent Street. I therefore
wrote to Mr. Cuxton, who knows me, asking him
if he had supplied spectacles to the late Jeffrey
Blackmore, Esq—here is a copy of my letter—and
if so, whether he would mind letting me have a
full description of them, together with the name of
the oculist who prescribed them.
“ He replied in this letter, which is pinned to the
copy of mine, that, about four years ago, he supplied
a pair of glasses to Mr. Jeffrey Blackmore, and
described them thus: ‘ The spectacles were for
constant use and had steel frames of Stopford’s
pattern with curl sides, the length of the side-
bars including the curled ends being 13- 3 cm. The
bridge was broad with a gold lining-plate, shaped as
shown by the enclosed tracing from the diagram on
the perscription. Distance between centres 6-2 cm.
“ ‘ Right eye plain glass.
“ ‘ Left eye— 5-75 D. spherical
—3-25 D. cylindrical, axis 35°.’


An Exposition and a Tragedy 303


who murdered poor old uncle Jeffrey—for I suppose
he did murder him? ”
“ I think there is no doubt of it,” replied Thom-
dyke.
“ Then,” said Marchmont, “ we will hear the rest
of the argument, if you please.”
“ Very well,” said Thorndyke. “ As the evidence
stands, we have proved that Jeffrey Blackmore
was a prisoner in the house in Kennington Lane
and that some one was personating him at New Inn.
That some one, we have seen, was, in all probability,
John Blackmore. We now have to consider the
man Weiss. Who was he? and can we connect
him in any way with New Inn ?
" We may note in passing that Weiss and the
coachman were apparently one and the same
person. They were never seen together. When
Weiss was present, the coachman was not available
even for so urgent a service as the obtaining of an
antidote to the poison. Weiss always appeared
some time after Jervis’s arrival and disappeared
some time before his departure, in each case sufﬁci-
ently long to allow of a change of disguise. But we
need not labour the point, as it is not of primary
importance.
" To return to Weiss. He was clearly heavily
disguised, as we see by his unwillingness to show
himself even by the light of a candle. But there
is an item of positive evidence on this point which
is important from having other bearings. It is
furnished by the spectacles worn by Weiss, of
which you have heard Jervis’s description| These


304 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


spectacles had very peculiar optical properties.
When you looked through them they had the pro-
perties of plain glass; when you looked at them
they had the appearance of lenses. But only one
kind of glass possesses these properties; namely,
that which, like an ordinary watch-glass, has curved,
parallel surfaces. But for what purpose could a
person wear ‘ watch-glass ’ spectacles? Clearly,
not to assist his vision. The only alternative is
disguise.
“ The properties of these spectacles introduce
a very curious and interesting feature into the
case. To the majority of persons, 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 cannot see distinctly through
them at all; while, if he wears concave, or near
sight, glasses, the effort to see through them pro—
duces such strain and fatigue that his eyes become
disabled altogether. On the stage the difﬁculty
is met by using spectacles of plain window-glass;
but in real life this would hardly do; the ‘ pro-
perty ’ spectacles would be detected at once and
give rise to suspicion.
;" The personator is therefore in this dilemma:
if he wears actual spectacles, he cannot see through
them; if he wears sham spectacles of plain glass,
his diguise will probably be detected. There is
only one way out of the difﬁculty, and that not
a very satisfactory one; but Mr. Weiss seems to


306 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


snap into the bezel or frame; but the edge of this
object was ground to a double bevel, like the edge of
a spectacle-glass, which ﬁts into a groove in the
frame and is held by the side-bar screw. The
inevitable inference was that this was a spectacle-
glass. But, if so, it was part of a pair of spectacles
identical in properties with those worn by Mr.
Weiss.
“ The importance of this conclusion emerges
when we consider the exceptional character of Mr.
Weiss’s spectacles. They were not merely peculiar
or remarkable; they were probably unique. It is
exceedingly likely that there is not in the entire
world another similar pair of spectacles. Whence
the ﬁnding of these fragments of glass in the bedroom
establishes a considerable probability that Mr. Weiss
was, at some time, in the chambers at New Inn.
“ And now let us gather up the threads of this
part of the argument. We are inquiring into the
identity of the man Weiss. Who was he?
“ In the ﬁrst place, we ﬁnd him committing a
secret crime from which John Blackmore alone
will beneﬁt. This suggests the prima-facie prob-
ability that he was John Blackmore.
“ Then we ﬁnd that he was a man of normal
eyesight who was wearing spectacles for the pur—
pose of disguise. But the tenant of New In,
whom we have seen to be, almost certainly, John
Blackmore—and whom we will, for the present,
assume to have been John Blackmore—was a
man with normal eyesight who wore spectacles for
disguise.


An Exposition and a Tragedy 309


the cabman—should know that Jeffrey was not
alone when he came to the inn that night. If the
fact had leaked out and it had become known that
a man had accompanied him to his chambers,
some suspicion might have arisen, and that sus-
picion would have pointed to John, who was directly
interested in his brother’s death. But if it had
transpired that Jeffrey was accompanied by a
woman, there would have been less suspicion, and
that suspicion would not have pointed to John
Blackmore.
“ Thus all the general probabilities are in favour
of the hypothesis that this woman was Jeffrey
Blackmore. There is, however, an item of positive
evidence that strongly supports this view. When
I examined the clothing of the deceased, I found
on the trousers a horizontal crease on each leg
as if the trousers had been turned up half-way to
the knees. This appearance is quite understandable
if we suppose that the trousers were worn under
a skirt and were turned up so that they should
not he accidentally seen. Otherwise it is quite
incomprehensible.”
“ Is it not rather strange,” said Marchmont,
“ that Jeffrey should have allowed himself to be
dressed up in this remarkable manner?”
“ I think not,” replied Thorndyke. “ There is
no reason to suppose that he knew how he was
dressed. You have heard Jervis’s description of
his condition; that of a mere automaton. You
know that without his spectacles he was practically
blind, and that he could not have worn them since


.dn Exposition and a Tragedy 311


like Mrs. Schallibaum, excepting that she has a
cast in the left eye. She is a dark woman with
very heavy eyebrows.”
“ That is to say that she differs from Mrs. Schalli-
baum in those peculiarities that can be artiﬁcially
changed and resembles her in the one feature that
is unchangeable. Do you know if her Christian
name happens to be Pauline? ”
“ Yes, it is. She was a Miss Pauline Hagenbeck,
a member of an American theatrical company.
What made you ask?”
“ The name which Jervis heard poor Jeffrey
struggling to pronounce seemed to me to resemble
Pauline more than any other name.”
“ There is one little point that strikes me,” said
Marchmont. “ Is it not rather remarkable that the
porter should have noticed no difference between
the body of Jeffrey and the living man whom he
knew by sight, and who must, after all, have been
distinctly different in appearance? ”
" I am glad you raised that question,” Thorndyke
replied, “for that very difﬁculty presented itself
to me at the beginning of the case. But on think-
ing it over, I decided that it was an imaginary
diﬂiculty, assuming, as we do, that there was a
good deal of resemblance between the two men.
Put yourself in the porter’s place and follow his
mental processes. He is informed that a dead
man is lying on the bed in Mr. Blackmore’s rooms.
Naturally, he assumes that the dead man is Mr.
Blackmore—who, by the way, had hinted at suicide
only the night before. With this idea he enters the


3r2 The Mystery of 31, New Inn


chambers and sees a man a good deal like Mr.
Blackmore and wearing Mr. Blackmore’s clothes,
lying on Mr. Blackmore’s bed. The idea that the
body could be that of some other person has never
entered his mind. If he notes any difference of
appearance he will put that down to the effects of
death ; for every one knows that a man dead looks
somewhat different from the same man alive. I
take it as evidence of great acuteness on the part
of John Blackmore that he should have calculated
so cleverly, not only the mental process of the
porter, but the erroneous reasoning which every one
would base on the porter’s conclusions. For, since
the body was actually Jeffrey’s, and was identiﬁed
by the porter as that of his tenant, it has been
assumed by every one that no question was possible
as to the identity of Jeffrey Blackmore and the
tenant of New Inn.”
There was a brief silence, and then Marchmont
asked:
“ May we take it that we have now heard all the
evidence ? ”
“ Yes,” replied Thomdyke. “ That is my case.”
“ Have you given information to the police? ”
Stephen asked eagerly. ’
“ Yes. As soon as I had obtained the statement
of the cabman, Ridley, and felt that I had enough
evidence to secure a conviction, I called at Scotland
Yard and had an interview with the Assistant Com-
missioner. The case is in the hands of Superinten-
dent Miller of the Criminal Investigation Depart-
ment, a most acute and energetic oﬂicer. I have


314 r The Mystery of 31, New Inn


The ofﬁcer bowed to our friends and remarked :
“ I am just in time, it seems. A few minutes
more and I should have missed these gentlemen.
I don’t know what you’ll think of my news.”
“ You haven’t let that villain escape, I hope,”
Stephen exclaimed.
“ Well,” said the Superintendent, “ he is out of
my hands and yours too; and so is the woman.
Perhaps I had better tell you what has happened.”
“ If you would be so kind,” said Thomdyke,
motioning the oﬂicer to a chair.
The superintendent seated himself with the
manner of a man who has had a long and strenuous
day, and forthwith began his story.
“ As soon as we had your information, we pro-
cured a warrant for the arrest of both parties, and
then I went straight to their ﬂat with Inspector
Badger and a sergeant. There we learned from
the attendant that they were away from home and
were not expected back until to-day about noon.
We kept a watch on the premises, and this morning,
about the time appointed, a man and a woman,
answering to the description, arrived at the ﬂat.
We followed them in and saw them enter the lift,
and we were going to get into the lift too, when
the man pulled the rope, and away they went.
There was nothing for us to do but run up the
stairs, which we did as fast as we could race; but
they got to their landing ﬁrst, and we were only
just in time to see them nip in and shut the door.
However, it seemed that we had them safe enough,
for there was no dropping out of the windows at


An Exposition and a Tragedy 315


that height ; so we sent the sergeant to get a lock-
smith to pick the lock or force the door, while we
kept on ringing the bell.
“ About three minutes after the sergeant left, I
happened to look out of the landing window and
saw a hansom pull up opposite the ﬂats. I put
my head out of the window, and, hang me if I
didn’t see our two friends getting into the cab. It
seems that there was a small lift inside the ﬂat
communicating with the kitchen, and they had
slipped down it one at a time.
“ Well, of course, we raced down the stairs like
acrobats, but by the time we got to the bottom
the cab was off with a ﬁne start. We ran out
into Victoria Street, and there we could see it
half-way down the street and going like a chariot
race. We managed to pick up another hansom
and told the cabby to keep the other one in sight,
and away we went like the very deuce; along
Victoria Street and Broad Sanctuary, across Parlia-
ment Square, over Westminster Bridge and along
York Road; we kept the other beggar in sight,
but we couldn’t gain an inch on him. Then we
turned into Waterloo Station, and, as we were
driving up the slope we met another hansom coming
down; and when the cabby kissed his hand and
smiled at us, we guessed that he was the sportsman
we had been following.
“ But there was no time to ask questions. It is an
awkward station with a lot of different exits, and it
~looked a good deal as if our quarry had got away.
However, I took a chance. I remembered that


316 4 The Mystery of 3!, New Inn


the Southampton express was due to start about
this time, and I took a. short cut across the lines and
made for the platform that it starts from. Just
as Badger and I got to the end, about thirty yards
from the rear of the train, we saw a man and a woman
running in front of us. Then the guard blew his
whistle and the train began to move. The man
and the woman managed to scramble into one of
the rear compartments and Badger and I raced up
the platform like mad. A porter tried to head us
off, but Badger capsized him and we both sprinted
harder than ever, and just hopped on the foot-board
of the guard’s van as the train began to get up
speed. The guard couldn’t risk putting us off, so
he had to let us into his van, which suited us exactly,
as we could watch the train on both sides from the
look-out. And we did watch, I can tell you ; for
our friend in front had seen us. His head was out
of the window as we climbed on to the foot-board.
“ However, nothing happened until we stopped at
Southampton West. There, I need not say, we
lost no time in hopping out, for we naturally ex-
pected our friends to make a rush for the exit.
But they didn’t. Badger watched the platform,
and I kept a look-out to see that they didn’t slip
away across the line from the off-side. But still
there was no sign of them. Then I walked up the
train to the compartment which I had seen them
enter. And there they were, apparently fast asleep
in the corner by the off-side window, the man
leaning back with his mouth open and the woman
resting against him with her head on his shoulder.


An Exposition and a Tragedy 317


She gave me quite a turn when I went in to look
at them, for she had her eyes half-closed and seemed
to be looking round at me with a most horrible
expression ; but I found afterwards that the pecu-
liar appearance of looking round was due to the cast
in her eye.”
“ They were dead, I suppose? ” said Thorndyke.
“ Ye , sir. Stone dead; and I found these on
the ﬂoor of the carriage.”
He held up two tiny yellow glass tubes, each
labelled “ Hypodermic tabloids. Aconitine Nitrate
“ Hal ” exclaimed Thorndyke, “ this fellow was
well up in alkaloidal poisons, it seems; and they
appear to have gone about prepared for emergen-
cies. These tubes each contained twenty tabloids,
a thirty-second of a grain altogether, so we may
assume that about twelve times the medicinal dose
was swallowed. Death must have occurred in a
few minutes, and a merciful death too.”
“ A more merciful death than they deserved,”
exclaimed Stephen, “ when one thinks of the misery
and suffering that they inﬂicted on poor old uncle
Jeffrey. I would sooner have had them hanged.”
“ It’s better as it is, sir,” said Miller. " There
is no need, now, to raise any questions in detail at
the inquest. The publicity of a trial for murder
would have been very unpleasant for you. I wish
Dr. Jervis had given the tip to me instead of to
that confounded, over-cautious—but there, I mustn’t
rim down my brother ofﬁcers: and it’s easy to be
wise after the event.


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