^BIG BOW 
 MYSTERY 
 
 '.ui.iiLuuumu\r-iU 
 
^\ <^e<^> 
 

ALPHA LIBRARY. 
 
 The Big Bow Mystery 
 
 I: Zangwill 
 
 
 Chicago and New York : 
 
 Rand, McNally & Company, 
 
 Publishers. 
 
Copyright, 1895, by "ELaKd,' MclSTally & Cc. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 
 OF MURDEES AND MYSTERIES. 
 
 As this little book was written some four 
 years ago, I feel able to review it without 
 prejudice. A new book just hot from the 
 brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its 
 begetter, but an old book has got into the 
 proper perspective and may be jDraised by 
 him without fear or favor. ' ' The Big Bow 
 Mystery" seems to me an excellent murder 
 story, as murder stories go, for, while as sen- 
 sational as the most of them, it contains 
 more humor and character creation than the 
 best. Indeed, the humor is too abundant. 
 Mysteries should be sedate and sober. 
 There should be a pervasive atmosphere of 
 horror and awe such as Poe manages to 
 create. Humor is out of tone; it would be 
 more artistic to preserve a somber note 
 throughout. But I was a realist in those 
 days, and in real life mysteries occur to real 
 
 persons with their individual humors, and 
 
 (iii) 
 
 Mi?39404 
 
iv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mysterious circumstances are apt to be com- 
 plicated by comic. The indispensable con- 
 dition of a good mystery is that it should be 
 able and unable to be solved by the reader, 
 and that the writer's solution should satisfy. 
 Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough 
 till the denouement is reached, only to 
 leave the reader with the sense of having 
 been robbed of his breath under false pre- 
 tenses. And not only must the solution be 
 adequate, but all its data must be given in 
 the body of the story. The author must not 
 suddenly spring a new person or a new 
 circumstance upon his reader at the end. 
 Thus, if a friend were to ask me to guess 
 who dined with him yesterday, it would be 
 fatuous if he had in mind somebody of 
 whom he knew I had never heard. The only 
 person who has ever solved "The Big Bow 
 Mystery" is myself. This is not paradox 
 but plain fact. For long before the book 
 was written, I said to myself one night that 
 no mystery-monger had ever murdered a 
 man in a room to which there was no 
 X)ossible access. The puzzle was scarcely 
 propounded ere the solution flew up and the 
 idea lay stored in my mind till, years later, 
 
INTRODUCTION. V 
 
 during the silly season, tlie editor of a 
 popular London evening paper, anxious to 
 let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me 
 to provide him with a more original piece of 
 fiction. I might have refused, but there was 
 murder in my soul, and here was the oppor- 
 tunity. I went to work seriously, though 
 the Morning Post subsequently said the 
 skit was too labored, and I succeeded at least 
 in exciting my readers, so many of whom 
 sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape 
 of solutions during the run of the story that, 
 when it ended, the editor asked me to say 
 something by way of acknowledgement. 
 Thereupon I wrote a letter to the paper, 
 thanking the would-be solvers for their 
 kindly attempts to help me out of the mess 
 into which I had got the plot. I did not 
 like to wound their feelings by saying 
 straight out that they had failed, one and all, 
 to hit on the real murderer, just like real 
 police, so I tried to break the truth to them 
 in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus: 
 
 To the Editor of '' The Star.'' 
 
 Sir: Now that ^' The Big Bow Mystery "is 
 solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, 
 will you allow that person the use of your invalu- 
 
Vi INTEODUCTION. 
 
 able columns to enable him to thank the hundreds 
 of your readers who have favored him with their 
 kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was 
 running and they were reading ? I ask this more 
 especially because great credit is due to them for 
 enabling me to end the story in a manner so 
 satisfactory to myself. When I started it, I had, 
 of course, no idea who had done the murder, 
 but I was determined no one should guess it. 
 Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the 
 name of a suspect, I determined he or she should 
 not be the guilty party. By degrees every one 
 of the characters got ticked off as innocent — all 
 except one, and I had no option but to make that 
 character the murderer. I was very sorry to do 
 this, as I rather liked that particular person, but 
 when one has such ingenius readers, what can one 
 do ? You can't let anybody boast that he guessed 
 aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the 
 plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen 
 the course most consistent with the dignity of 
 my profession. Had I not been impelled by this 
 consideration I should certainly have brought in a 
 verdict against Mrs. Drabdump, as recommended 
 by the reader who said that, judging by the illus- 
 tration in the " Star,"' she must be at least seven 
 feet high, and, therefore, could easily have got on 
 the roof and put her (proportionately) long arm 
 down the chimney to effect the cut. I am not 
 
INTKODUOTION. vii 
 
 responsible for the artist's conception of the 
 character. When I last saw the good lady she 
 was under six feet^ but your artist may have had 
 later information. The '' Star " is always so fright- 
 fully up to date. I ought not to omit the humor- 
 ous remark of a correspondent, who said: '*Mort- 
 lake might have swung in some wild way from 
 one window to another, at any rate in a story." 
 I hope my fellow-writers thus satirically prodded 
 will not demand his name, as I object to murders, 
 ''at any rate in real life.'" Finally, a word with 
 the legions who have taken me to task for 
 allowing Mr. Gladstone to write over 170 words 
 on a postcard. It is all owing to you, sir, 
 who announced my story as containing humor- 
 ous elements. I tried to put in some, and 
 this gentle dig at the grand old correspond- 
 ent's habits was intended to be one of them. 
 However, if I am to be taken ''at the foot 
 of the letter" (or rather of the postcard), I 
 must say that only to-day I received a postcard 
 containing about 250 words. But this was not 
 from Mr. Gladstone. At any rate, till Mr. Glad- 
 stone himself repudiates this postcard, I shall 
 consider myself justified in allowing it to stand in 
 the book. 
 
 Again thanking your readers for their valuable 
 assistance. Yours, etc. 
 
Viii INTEODUOTION. 
 
 One would have imagined that nobody 
 could take this seriously, for it is obvious 
 that the mystery -story is just the one spe- 
 cies of story that can not be told impromptu 
 or altered at the last moment, seeing that it 
 demands the most careful piecing together 
 and the most elaborate dove-tailing. Never- 
 theless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, 
 you shall find it no joke after many days. 
 This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, 
 New Zealand: ^'The chain of circumstan- 
 tial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From 
 all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was puz- 
 zled, after carefully forging every link, how 
 to break it. The method ultimately adopted 
 I consider more ingenious than convincing." 
 After that I made up my mind never to joke 
 again, but this good intention now helps to 
 pave the beaten path. 
 
 I. Zangwill. 
 
 London, September, 1895. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The Mystery which the author will al- 
 ways associate with this story is how he got 
 through the task of writing it. It was writ- 
 ten in a fortnight — day by day — to meet a 
 sudden demand from the "Star," which 
 made '^a new departure'^ with it. 
 
 The said fortnight was further disturbed 
 by an extraordinary combined attack of 
 other troubles and tasks. This is no excuse 
 for the shortcomings of the book, as it was 
 always open to the writer to revise or sup- 
 press it. The latter function may safely be 
 left to the public, while if the work stands 
 — almost to a letter — as it appeared in the 
 "Star," it is because the author cannot tell 
 a story more than once. 
 
 The introduction of Mr. Gladstone into a 
 fictitious scene is defended on the ground 
 that he is largely mythical. 
 
 I. Z. 
 
THE 
 
 BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 On a memorable morning of early Decem- 
 ber London opened its eyes on a frigid gray 
 mist. There are mornings when King Fog 
 masses his molecules of carbon in serried 
 squadrons in the city, while he scatters 
 them tenuously in the suburbs ; so that your 
 morning train may bear you from twilight 
 to darkness. But to-day the enemy's ma- 
 neuvering was more monotonous. From 
 Bow even unto Hammersmith there drag- 
 gled a dull, wretched vapor, like the wraith 
 of an impecunious suicide come into a for- 
 tune immediately after the fatal deed. The 
 barometers and thermometers had sym- 
 pathetically shared its depression, and their 
 spirits (when they had any) were low. The 
 cold cut like a many-bladed knife. 
 
2 th£) big bow mystery. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump, of 11 Glover Street, 
 Bow, was one of the few persons in London 
 whom fog did not depress. She went about 
 her work quite as cheerlessly as usual. She 
 had been among the earliest to be aware of 
 the enemy's advent, picking out the strands 
 of fog from the coils of darkness the mo- 
 ment she rolled up her bedroom blind and 
 unveiled the somber picture of the winter 
 morning. She knew that the fog had come 
 to stay for the day at least, and that the 
 gas bill for the quarter vf as going to beat the 
 record in high-jumping. She also knew that 
 this was because she had allowed her new 
 gentleman lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, to 
 pay a fixed sum of a shilling a week for 
 gas, instead of charging him a proportion of 
 the actual account for the whole house. The 
 meteorologists might have saved the credit 
 of their science if they had reckoned witli 
 Mrs. Drabdump's next gas bill when they 
 predicted the weather and made "Snow" the 
 favorite, and said that "Fog" would be no- 
 where. Fog was everywhere, yet Mrs. Drab- 
 dump took no credit to herself for her 
 prescience. Mrs. Drabdump indeed took no 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 3 
 
 credit for anything, paying her way along 
 doggedly, and struggling through life like 
 a wearied swimmer trying to touch the ho- 
 rizon. That things always went as badly as 
 she had foreseen did not exhilarate her in 
 the least. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump was a widow. Widows 
 are not born, but made, else jou might have 
 fancied Mrs. Drabdump had always been a 
 widow. Nature had given her that tall, 
 spare form, and that pale, thin-lipped, elon- 
 gated, hard-eyed visage, and that painfully 
 precise hair, which are always associated 
 with widowhood in low life. It is only in 
 higher circles that women can lose their 
 husbands and yet remain bewitching. The 
 late Mr. Drabdump had scratched the base 
 of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. 
 Drabdump's foreboding that he would die 
 of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling 
 day and night with the shadow of Death, as 
 she had wrestled with it vainly twice be- 
 fore, when Katie died of diphtheria and lit- 
 tle Johnny of scarlet fever. Perhaps it is 
 from overwork among the poor that Death 
 has been reduced to a shadow. 
 
4 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump was lighting the kitchen 
 fire. She did it very scientifically, as know- 
 ing the contrariety of coal and the anxiety 
 of flaming sticks to end in smoke unless 
 rigidly kept up to the mark. Science was a 
 success as usual; and Mrs. Drabdump rose 
 from her knees content, like a Parsee priest- 
 ess who had duly paid her morning devo- 
 tions to her deity. Then she started violent- 
 ly, and nearly lost her balance. Her eye 
 had caught the hands of the clock on the 
 mantel. They pointed to fifteen minutes to 
 seven. Mrs. Drabdump's devotion to the 
 kitchen fire invariably terminated at fifteen 
 minutes past six. What was the matter 
 with the clock? 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump had an immediate vision 
 of Snoppet, the neighboring horologist, 
 keeping the clock in hand for weeks and 
 then returning it only superficially repaired 
 and secretly injured more vitally "for the 
 good of the trade." The evil vision vanished 
 as quickly as it came, exorcised by the deep 
 boom of St. Dunstan's bells chiming the 
 three-quarters. In its place a great horror 
 surged. Instinct had failed; Mrs. Drab- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 5 
 
 dump had risen at half -past six instead of 
 six. Now she understood why she had been 
 feeling so dazed and strange and sleepy. 
 She had overslept herself. 
 
 Chagrined and puzzled, she hastily set the 
 kettle over the crackling coal, discovering a 
 second later that she had overslept herself 
 because Mr. Constant wished to be woke 
 three-quarters of an hour earlier than usual, 
 and to have his breakfast at seven, having 
 to speak at an early meeting of discontented 
 tram-men. She ran at once, candle in hand, 
 to his bedroom. It was upstairs. All "up- 
 stairs" was Arthur Constant's domain, for it 
 consisted of but two mutually independent 
 rooms. Mrs. Drabdump knocked viciously 
 at the door of the one he used for a bedroom, 
 crying, "Seven o'clock, sir. You'll be late, 
 sir. You must get up at once." The usual 
 slumbrous "All right" was not forthcoming; 
 but, as she herself had varied her morning 
 salute, her ear was less expectant of the 
 echo. She went downstairs, with no fore- 
 boding save that the kettle would come off 
 second best in the race between its boiling 
 and her lodger's dressing. 
 
6 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 For* she knew there was no fear of Arthur 
 Constant's lying deaf to the call of dutv — 
 temporarily represented by Mrs. D 
 dump. He was a light sleeper, and the t tm 
 conductors' bells were probably ringing in 
 his ears, summoning him to the meeting. 
 Why Arthur Constant, B. A. — white- 
 handed and white-shirted, and gentleman 
 to the very purse of him — should con- 
 cern himself with tram-men, when for- 
 tune had confined his necessary rela- 
 tions with drivers to cabmen at the least, 
 Mrs. Drabdump could not quite make 
 out. He probably aspired to represent 
 Bow in Parliament; but then it would 
 surely have been wiser to lodge with a land- 
 lady who possessed a vote by having a hus- 
 band alive. Nor was there much practical 
 wisdom in his wish to black his own boots 
 (an occupation in which he shone but little), 
 and to live in every way like a Bow working 
 man. Bow working men were not so lavish 
 in their patronage of water, whether exist- 
 ing in drinking glasses, morning tubs, or 
 laundress' establishments. Nor did they 
 eat the delicacies with which Mrs. Drab- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 7 
 
 dump supplied him, with the assurance that 
 they were the artisan^s appanage. She couUi 
 ^-t bear to see him eat things unbefitting 
 b (5 station. Arthur Constant opened his 
 mouth and ate what his landlady gave him, 
 not first deliberately shutting his eyes ac- 
 cording to the formula, the rather pluming 
 himself on keeping them very wide open. 
 But it is difficult for saints to see through 
 their own halos; and in practice an aureola 
 about the head is often indistinguishable 
 from a mist. The tea to be scalded in Mr. 
 Constant's pot, when that cantankerous ket- 
 tle should boil, was not the coarse mixture 
 of black and green sacred to herself and 
 Mr. Mortlake, of whom the thoughts of 
 breakfast now reminded her. Poor Mr. 
 Mortlake, gone off without any to Devon- 
 port, somewhere about four in the fog-thick- 
 ened darkness of a winter night! Well, she 
 hoped his journey would be duly rewarded, 
 that his perks would be heavy, and that he 
 would make as good a thing out of the 
 "traveling expenses" as rival labor leaders 
 roundly accused him of to other people's 
 faces. She did not grudge him his gains. 
 
8 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 nor was it her business if, as they alleged, 
 in introducing Mr. Constant to her vacant 
 rooms, his idea was not merely to benefit his 
 landlady. He had done her an uncommon 
 good turn, queer as was the lodger thus in- 
 troduced. His own apostleship to the sons 
 of toil gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of 
 perplexity. Tom Mortlake had been a com- 
 positor; and apostleship was obviously a 
 profession better paid and of a higher 
 social status. Tom Mortlake — the hero of 
 a hundred strikes — set up in print on a 
 poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom 
 Mortlake setting up other men's names at 
 a case. Still, the work was not all beer 
 and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump felt that 
 Tom's latest job was not enviable. She 
 shook his door as she passed it on her way 
 to the kitchen, but there was no response. 
 The street door was only a few feet off down 
 the passage, and a glance at it dispelled the 
 last hope that Tom had abandoned the jour- 
 ney. The door was unbolted and unchained, 
 and the only security was the latch-key lock. 
 Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit uneasy, though, 
 to give her her due, she never suffered as 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 9 
 
 much as most housewives do from criminals 
 who never come. Not quite opposite, but 
 still only a few doors off, on the other side of 
 the street, lived the celebrated ex-detective, 
 Grodman, and, illogically enough, his pres- 
 ence in the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a 
 curious sense of security, as of a believer 
 livina- under the shadow of the fane. That 
 any human being of ill-odor should con- 
 sciously come within a mile of the scent of 
 so famous a sleuth-hound seemed to her 
 highly improbable. Grodman had retired 
 (with a competence) and was only a sleep- 
 ing dog now; still, even criminals would 
 have sense enough to let him lie. 
 
 So Mrs. Drabdump did not really feel that 
 there had been any danger, especially as a 
 second glance at the street door showed 
 that Mortlake had been thoughtful enough 
 to slip the loop that held back the bolt of 
 the big lock. She allowed herself another 
 throb of sympathy for the labor leader 
 whirling on his dreary way toward Devon- 
 port Dockyard. Not that he had told her 
 anything of his journey beyond the town; 
 but she knew Devonport had a Dockyard 
 
10 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 because Jessie Dymond — Tom's sweetheart 
 ■ — once mentioned that her aunt lived near 
 there, and it lay on the surface that Tom 
 had gone to help the dockers, who were im- 
 itating their London brethren. Mrs. Drab- 
 dump did not need to be told things to be 
 aware of them. She went back to prepare 
 Mr. Constant's superfine tea, vaguely won- 
 dering why people were so discontented 
 nowadays. But when she brought up the 
 tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr. Con- 
 stant's sitting-room (which adjoined his bed- 
 room, though without communicating with 
 it), Mr. Constant was not sitting in it. She 
 lit the gas, and laid the cloth ; then she re- 
 turned to the landing and beat at the bed- 
 room door with an imperative palm. Si- 
 lence alone answered her. She called him by 
 name and told him the hour, but hers was 
 the only voice she heard, and it sounded 
 strangely to her in the shadows of the stair- 
 case. Then, muttering, "Poor gentleman, 
 he had the toothache last night ; and p'r'aps 
 he's only just got a wink o' sleep. Pity to 
 disturb him for the sake of them grizzling 
 conductors. I'll let him sleep his usual 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 11 
 
 time," she bore the tea-pot downstairs with 
 a mournful, almost poetic, consciousness, 
 that soft-boiled eggs (like love) must grow 
 cold. 
 
 Half-past seven came — and she knocked 
 again. But Constant slept on. 
 
 His letters, always a strange assortment, 
 arrived at eight, and a telegram came soon 
 after. Mrs. Drabdump rattled his door, 
 shouted, and at last put the wire under it. 
 Her heart was beating fast enough now, 
 though there seemed to be a cold, clammy 
 snake curling round it. She went down- 
 stairs again and turned the handle of Mort- 
 lake's room, and went in without knowing 
 why. The coverlet of the bed showed that 
 the occupant had only lain down in his 
 clothes, as if fearing to miss the early train. 
 She had not for a moment expected to find 
 him in the room; yet somehow the con- 
 sciousness that she was alone in the house 
 with the sleeping Constant seemed to flash 
 for the first time upon her, and the clammy 
 snake tightened its folds round her heart. 
 
 She opened the street door, and her eye 
 wandered nervously up and down. It was 
 
12 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 half -past eight The little street stretched 
 cold and still in the gray mist, blinking 
 bleary eyes at either end, where the street 
 lamps smoldered on. No one was visible 
 for the moment, though smoke was rising 
 from many of the chimneys to greet its sis- 
 ter mist. At the house of the detective 
 across the way the blinds were still down 
 and the shutters up. Yet the familiar, pro- 
 saic aspect of the street calmed her. The 
 bleak air set her coughing; she slammed 
 the door to, and returned to the kitchen to 
 make fresh tea for Constant, who could only 
 be in a deep sleep. But the canister trem- 
 bled in her grasp. She did not know wheth- 
 er she dropped it or threw it down, but there 
 was nothing in the hand that battered 
 again a moment later at the bedroom door. 
 No sound within answered the clamor with- 
 out. She rained blow upon blow in a sort 
 of spasm of frenzy, scarce remembering that 
 her object w^as merely to wake her lodger, 
 and almost staving in the lower panels with 
 her kicks. Then she turned the handle and 
 tried to open the door, but it was locked. 
 The resistance recalled her to herself — she 
 
•THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 13 
 
 had a moment of shocked decency at the 
 thought that she had been about to enter 
 Constant'ls bedroom. Then the terror came 
 over her afresh. She felt that she was alone 
 in the house with a corpse. She sank to the 
 floor, cowering; with difficulty stifling a 
 desire to scream. Then she rose with a jerk 
 and raced down the stairs without looking 
 behind her, and threw open the door and 
 ran out into the street, only pulling up with 
 her hand violently agitating Grodman's 
 door-knocker. In a moment the first floor 
 window was raised — the little house was of 
 the same pattern as her own — and Grod- 
 man's full, fleshy face loomed through the 
 fog in sleepy irritation from under a night- 
 cap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective's 
 face dawmed upon her like the sun upon an 
 occupant of the haunted chamber. 
 
 "What in the devil's the matter?" he 
 growled. Grodman was not an early bird, 
 now that he had no worms to catch. He 
 could afford to despise proverbs now, for 
 the house in which he lived was his, and he 
 lived in it because several other houses in 
 the street were also his, and it is well for 
 
14 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the landlord to be about his own estate in 
 Bow, where poachers often shoot the moon. 
 Perhaps the desire to enjoy his great- 
 ness among his early cronies counted 
 for something, too, for he had been born and 
 bred at Bow, receiving when a youth his 
 first engagement from the local police quar- 
 ters, whence he drew a few shillings a week 
 as an amateur detective in his leisure hours. 
 
 Grodman was still a bachelor. In the 
 celestial matrimonial bureau a partner 
 might have been selected for him, but he 
 had never been able to discover her. It was 
 his one failure as a detective. He was a 
 self-sufficing person, who preferred a gas 
 stove to a domestic; but in deference to 
 Glover Street opinion he admitted a female 
 factotum between ten a. m. and ten p. m., 
 and, equally in deference to Glover Street 
 opinion, excluded her between ten p. m. and 
 ten a. m. 
 
 "I want you to come across at once," Mrs. 
 Drabdump gasped. "Something has hap- 
 pened to Mr. Constant." 
 
 "What! Not bludgeoned by the police at 
 the meeting this morning, I hope?" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 15 
 
 "No, no! He didn't go. He is dead." 
 
 "Dead?" Grodman's face grew very seri- 
 ous now. 
 
 "Yes. Murdered !" 
 
 "What?" almost shouted the ex-detective. 
 "How? When? Where? Who?" 
 
 "I don't know. I can't get to him. I have 
 beaten at his door. He does not answer." 
 
 Grodman's face lit up with relief. 
 
 "You silly woman! Is that all? I shall 
 have a cold in my head. Bitter weather. 
 He's dog-tired after yesterday — processions, 
 three speeches, kindergarten, lecture on 
 ^the moon,' article on co-operation. That's 
 his style." It was also Grodman's style. He 
 never wasted words. 
 
 "No," Mrs. Drabdump breathed up at him 
 solemnly, "he's dead." 
 
 "All right; go back. Don't alarm the 
 neighborhood unnecessarily. Wait for me. 
 Down in five minutes." Grodman did not 
 take this Cassandra of the kitchen too seri- 
 ously. Probably he knew his woman. His 
 small, bead-like eyes glittered with an al- 
 most amused smile as he withdrew them 
 from Mrs. Drabdump's ken, and shut down 
 
16 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the sash with a bang. The poor woman ran 
 back across the road and through her door, 
 which she would not close behind her. It 
 seemed to shut her in with the dead. She 
 waited in the passaga After an age — seven 
 minutes by any honest clock — Grodman 
 made his appearance, looking as dressed as 
 usual, but with unkempt hair and with dis- 
 consolate side-whisker. He was not quite 
 used to that side-whisker yet, for it had 
 only recently come within the margin of cul- 
 tivation. In active service Grodman had 
 been clean-shaven, like all members of the 
 profession — for surely your detective is the 
 most versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump 
 closed the street door quietly, and pointed 
 to the stairs, fear operating like a polite de- 
 sire to give him precedence. Grodman 
 ascended, amusement still glimmering in 
 his eyes. Arrived on the landing he 
 knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, 
 "Mne o'clock, Mr. Constant; nine o'clock!" 
 When he ceased there was no other sound 
 or movement. His face grew more serious. 
 He waited, then knocked, and cried louder. 
 He turned the handle, but the door was fast. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 17 
 
 Jle tried to peer through the keyhole, but 
 it was blocked. He shook the upper panels, 
 but the door seemed bolted as well as 
 locked. He stood still, his face set and rigid, 
 for he liked and esteemed the man. 
 
 ^'Ay, knock your loudest," whispered the 
 pale-faced woman. "You'll not wake him 
 now." 
 
 The gray mist had follow^ed them through 
 the street door, and hovered about the stair- 
 case, charging the air with a moist, sepul- 
 chral odor. 
 
 "Locked and bolted," muttered Grodman, 
 shaking the door afresh. 
 
 "Burst it open," breathed the woman, 
 trembling violently all over, and holding 
 her hands before her as if to ward off the 
 dreadful vision. Without another word, 
 Grodman applied his shoulder to the door, 
 and made a violent muscular effort. He 
 had been an athlete in his time, and the sap 
 was yet in him. The door creaked, little by 
 little it began to give, the woodwork en- 
 closing the bolt of the lock splintered, the 
 panels bent upw^ard, the large upper bolt 
 
18 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 tore off its iron staple; the door flew back 
 with a crash. Grodman rushed in. 
 
 ^^My God!" he cried. The woman 
 shrieked. The sight was too terrible. 
 
 Within a few hours the jubilant news- 
 boys were shrieking "Horrible Suicide in 
 Bow," and "The Star" poster added, for the 
 satisfaction of those too poor to purchase: 
 "A Philanthropist Cuts His Throat." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 19 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 But the newspapers were premature. 
 Scotland Yard refused to prejudge the case 
 despite the pennj-a-liners. Several arrests 
 were made, so that the later editions were 
 compelled to soften "Suicide" into "Mys- 
 tery." The people arrested were a nonde- 
 script collection of tramps. Most of them 
 had committed other offenses for which the 
 police had not arrested them. One bewil- 
 dered-looking gentleman gave himself up 
 (as if he were a riddle), but the police would 
 have none of him, and restored him forth- 
 with to his friends and keepers. The num- 
 ber of candidates for each new opening in 
 Newgate is astonishing. 
 
 The full significance of this tragedy of a 
 noble young life cut short had hardly time 
 to filter, into the public mind, when a fresh 
 sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had 
 been arrested the same day at Liverpool on 
 
20 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 suspicion of being concerned in the death of 
 his fellow-lodger. The news fell like a 
 bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mort- 
 lake's name was a household word. That 
 the gifted artisan orator, who had never 
 shrunk upon occasion from launching red 
 rhetoric at Society, should actually, have 
 shed blood seemed too startling, especially 
 as the blood shed was not blue, but the prop- 
 erty of a lovable young middle-class ideal- 
 ist, who had now literally given his life to 
 the Cause. But this supplementary sensa- 
 tion did not grow to a head, and everybody 
 (save a few labor leaders) was relieved to 
 hear that Tom had been released almost im- 
 mediately, being merely subpoenaed to ap- 
 pear at the inquest. In an interview which 
 he accorded to the representative of a Liver- 
 pool paper the same afternoon, he stated 
 that he put his arrest down entirely to the 
 enmity and rancor entertained toward him 
 by the police throughout the country. He 
 had come to Liverpool to trace the move- 
 ments of a friend about whom he was very 
 uneasy, and he was making anxious inquir- 
 ies at the docks to discover at what times 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 21 
 
 steamers left for America, wheu the detec- 
 tives stationed there in accordance with in- 
 structions from headquarters had arrested 
 him as a suspicious-looking character. 
 "Though," said Tom, "they must very well 
 have known my phiz, as I have been 
 sketched and caricatured all over the shop. 
 When I told them who I was they had the 
 decency to let me go. They thought they'd 
 scored off me enough, I reckon. Yes, it cer- 
 tainly is a strange coincidence that I might 
 actually have had something to do with the 
 poor fellow's death, which has cut me up as 
 much as anybody; though if they had 
 known I had just come from the 'scene of 
 the crime,' and actually lived in the house, 
 they would probably have — let me alone." 
 He laughed sarcastically. "They are a queer 
 lot of muddle-heads are the police. Their 
 motto is, Tirst catch your man, then cook 
 the evidence.' If you're on the spot you're 
 guilty because you're there, and if you're 
 elsewhere you're guilty because you have 
 gone away. Oh, I know them! If they 
 could have seen their way to clap me in 
 quod, they'd ha' done it. Lucky I know the 
 
22 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 number of the cabman who took me to Eus- 
 ton before five this morning." 
 
 "If they clapped you in quod," the inter- 
 viewer reported himself as facetiously ob- 
 serving, "the prisoners would be on strike in 
 a week." 
 
 "Yes, but there would be so many black- 
 legs ready to take their places," Mortlake 
 flashed back, "that I^m afraid it 'ould be no 
 go. But do excuse me. I am so upset about 
 my friend. Pm afraid he has left England, 
 and I have to make inquiries; and now 
 there's poor Constant gone — horrible! hor- 
 rible! and Pm due in London at the inquest. 
 I must really run away. Good-by. Tell 
 your readers it's all a police grudge." 
 
 "One last word, Mr. Mortlake, if you 
 please. Is it true that you were billed to 
 preside at a great meeting of clerks at St. 
 James' Hall between one and two to-day 
 to protest against the German invasion?" 
 
 "Whew! so I had. But the beggars ar- 
 rested me just before one, when I was going 
 to wire, and then the news of poor Con- 
 stant's end drove it out of my head. What 
 a nuisance! Lord, how troubles do come to- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 23 
 
 gether! Well, good-by, send me a copy of 
 the paper." 
 
 Tom Mortlake's evidence at the inquest 
 added little beyond this to the public knowl- 
 edge of his movements on the morning of 
 the Mystery. The cabman who drove him 
 to Euston had written indignantly to the 
 papers to say that he had picked up his cele- 
 brated fare at Bow Kailway Station at 
 about half-past four a. m., and the arrest 
 was a deliberate insult to democracy, and 
 he offered to make an affidavit to that ef- 
 fect, leaving it dubious to which effect. But 
 Scotland Yard betrayed no itch for the affi- 
 davit in question, and No. 2,138 subsided 
 again into the obscurity of his rank. Mort- 
 lake — whose face was very pale below the 
 black mane brushed back from his fine fore- 
 head — gave his evidence in low, sympa- 
 thetic tones. He had known the de- 
 ceased for over a year, coming constantly 
 across him in their common political and 
 social work, and had found the furnished 
 rooms for him in Glover Street at his own 
 request, they just being to let when Con- 
 stant resolved to leave his rooms at Oxford 
 
24 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 House in Bethnal Green and to share the 
 actual life of the people. The locality suit- 
 ed the deceased, as being near the People's 
 Palace. He respected and admired the de- 
 ceased, whose genuine goodness had won 
 all hearts. The deceased was an untiring 
 worker; never grumbled, was always in 
 fair spirits, regarded his life and wealth as 
 a sacred trust to be used for the benefit of 
 humanity. He had last seen him at a quar- 
 ter past nine p. m. on the day preceding his 
 death. He (witness) had received a letter by 
 the last post which made him uneasy about 
 a friend. Deceased was evidently suffering 
 from toothache, and was fixing a i)iece of 
 cotton-wool in a hollow tooth, but he did not 
 complain. Deceased seemed rather upset 
 by the news he brought, and they both dis- 
 cussed it rather excitedly. 
 
 By a Juryman: Did the news concern 
 him? 
 
 Mortlake : Only impersonally. He knew 
 my friend, and was keenly sympathetic 
 when one was in trouble. 
 
 Coroner: Could you show the jury the 
 letter you received? 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 25 
 
 Mortlake: I have mislaid it, and cannot 
 make out where it has got to. If you, sir, 
 think it relevant or essential, I will state 
 what the trouble was. 
 
 Coroner: Was the toothache very vio- 
 lent? 
 
 Mortlake: I^ cannot tell. I think not, 
 though he told me it had' disturbed his rest 
 the night before. 
 
 Coroner: What time did you leave him? 
 
 Mortlake: About twenty to ten. 
 
 Coroner: And what did you do then? 
 
 Mortlake: I went out for an hour or so to 
 make some inquiries. Then I returned, and 
 told my landlady I should be leaving by an 
 early train for — for the country. 
 
 Coroner: And that was the last you saw 
 of the deceased? 
 
 Mortlake (with emotion) : The last. 
 
 Coroner : How was he when you left him ? 
 
 Mortlake: Mainly concerned about my 
 trouble. 
 
 Coroner : Otherwise you saw nothing un- 
 usual about him? 
 
 Mortlake: Nothing. 
 
26 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Coroner: What time did you leave the 
 house on Tuesday morning? 
 
 Mortlake: At about live and twenty min- 
 utes past four. 
 
 Coroner: Are you sure that you shut the 
 street door? 
 
 Mortlake: Quite sure. Knowing my 
 landlady was rather a timid person, I even 
 slipped the bolt of the big lock, which was 
 usually tied back. It was impossible for 
 any one to get in even with a latch-key. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump's evidence (which, of 
 course, preceded his) was more important, 
 and occupied a considerable time, unduly 
 eked out by Drabdumpian padding. Thus 
 she not only deposed that Mr. Constant had 
 the toothache, but that it was going to last 
 about a week; in tragic-comic indifference 
 to the radical cure that had been effected. 
 Her account of the last hours of the de- 
 ceased tallied with Mortlake's, only that she 
 feared Mortlake was quarreling with him 
 over something in the letter that came by 
 the nine o'clock post. Deceased had left the 
 house a little after Mortlake, but had re- 
 turned before him, and had gone straight 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 27 
 
 to his bedroom. She had not actually seen 
 him come in, having been in the kitchen, but 
 she heard his latch-key, followed by his 
 light step up the stairs. 
 
 A Juryman : How do you know it was not 
 somebody else? (Sensation, of which the 
 juryman tries to look unconscious.) 
 
 Witness : He called down to me over the 
 banisters, and says in his sweetish voice: 
 "Be hextra sure to wake me at a quarter 
 to seven, Mrs. Drabdump, or else I shan't 
 get to my tram meeting." 
 
 (Juryman collapses.) 
 
 Coroner: And did you wake him? 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump (breaking down): Oh, 
 my lud, how can you ask? 
 
 Coroner: There, there, compose yourself. 
 I mean did you try to w^ake him? 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump: I have taken in and 
 done for lodgers this seventeen years, my 
 lud, and have always gave satisfaction ; and 
 Mr. Mortlake, he v/ouldn't ha' recommended 
 me otherwise, though I wish to Heaven the 
 poor gentleman had never 
 
 Coroner: Yes, yes, of course. You tried 
 to rouse him? 
 
 3 
 
28 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 But it was some time before Mrs. Drab- 
 dump was sufficiently calm to explain that 
 though she had overslept herself, and 
 though it would have been all the same 
 anyhow, she had come up to time. Bit by 
 bit the tragic story was forced from her lips 
 — a tragedy that even her telling could not 
 make tawdry. She told with superfluous de- 
 tail hoAV — when Mr. Grodman broke in the 
 door — she saw her unhappy gentleman 
 lodger lying on his back in bed, stone dead, 
 with a gaping red wound in his throat ; how 
 her stronger-minded companion calmed her 
 a little by spreading a handkerchief over the 
 distorted face; how they then looked vainly 
 about and under the bed for any instrument 
 by which the deed could have been done, the 
 veteran detective carefully making a rapid 
 inventory of the contents of the room, and 
 taking notes of the precise position and con- 
 dition of the body before anything was dis- 
 turbed by the arrival of gapers or bunglers; 
 how she had pointed out to him that both 
 the windows were firmly bolted to keep out 
 the cold night air; how, having noted this 
 down with a puzzled, pitying shake of the 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 29 
 
 head, he had opened the window to sum- 
 mon the police, and espied in the fog 
 one Denzil Cantercot, whom he called 
 and told to run to the nearest police- 
 station and ask them to send on an 
 inspector and a surgeon. How they both 
 remained in the room till the police ar- 
 rived, Grodman pondering deeply the 
 while and making notes every now and 
 again, as fresh points occurred to him, and 
 asking her questions about the poor, weak- 
 headed young man. Pressed as to what she 
 meant by calling the deceased "weak-head- 
 ed,'' she replied that some of her neighbors 
 wrote him begging letters, though. Heaven 
 knew, they were better off than herself, who 
 had to scrape her fingers to the bone for 
 every penny she earned. Under further 
 pressure from Mr. Talbot, who was watch- 
 ing the inquiry on behalf of Arthur Con- 
 stant's family, Mrs. Drabdump admitted 
 that the deceased had behaved like a human 
 being, nor was there anything externally 
 eccentric or queer in his conduct. He was 
 always cheerful and pleasant spoken, 
 though certainly soft — God rest his soul. 
 
30 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 No; he never shaved, but wore all the hair 
 that Heaven had given him. 
 
 By a Juryman: She thought deceased 
 was in the habit of locking his door when he 
 went to bed. Of course, she couldn't say 
 for certain. (Laughter.) There was no need 
 to bolt the door as well. The bolt slid up- 
 ward, and was at the top of the door. 
 When she first let lodgings, her reasons for 
 which she seemed anxious to publish, there 
 had only been a bolt, but a suspicious lodg- 
 er, she would not call him a gentleman, had 
 comx)lained that he could not fasten his door 
 behind him, and so she had been put to the 
 expense of having a lock made. The com- 
 plaining lodger went off soon after with- 
 out paying his rent. (Laughter.) She had 
 always known he would. 
 
 The Coroner: Was deceased at all nerv- 
 ous? 
 
 Witness: No, he was a very nice gentle- 
 man. (A laugh.) 
 
 Coroner: I mean did he seem afraid of 
 being robbed? 
 
 Witness: No, he was always goin' to 
 demonstrations. (Laughter.) I told him to 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 31 
 
 be careful. I told him I lost a purse with 
 3s. 2d. myself on Jubilee Day. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump resumed her seat, weep- 
 ing vaguely. 
 
 The Coroner: Gentlemen, we shall have 
 an opportunity of viewing the room shortly. 
 
 The story of the discovery of the body 
 was retold, though more scientifically, by 
 Mr. George Grodman, whose unexpected re- 
 surgence into the realm of his early exploits 
 excited as keen a curiosity as the reappear- 
 ance "for this occasion only" of a retired 
 prima donna. His book, "Criminals I Have 
 Caught," passed from the twenty-third to 
 the twenty-fourth edition merely on the 
 strength of it. Mr. Grodman stated that the 
 body was still warm when he found it. He 
 thought that death was quite recent. The 
 door he had had to burst was bolted as well 
 as locked. He confirmed Mrs. Drabdump's 
 statement about the windows; the chim- 
 ney was very narrow. The cut looked as if 
 done by a razor. There was no instrument 
 lying about the room. He had known the 
 deceased about a month. He seemed a very 
 earnest, simple-minded young fellow who 
 
32 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 spoke a great deal about the brotherhood 
 of man. ^The hardened old man-hunter's 
 voice was not free from a tremor as he spoke 
 jerkily of the dead man's enthusiasms.) He 
 should have thought the deceased the last 
 man in the world to commit suicide. 
 
 Mr. Denzil Cantercot was next called. He 
 was a poet. (Laughter.) He was on his way 
 to Mr. Grodman's house to tell him he had 
 been unable to do some writing for him be- 
 cause he was suffering from writer's cramp, 
 when Mr. Grodman called to him from the 
 window of No. 11 and asked him to run for 
 the police. No, he did not run; he was a 
 philosopher. (Laughter.) He returned 
 with them to the door, but did not go up. 
 He had no stomach for crude sensations. 
 (Laughter.) The gray fog was sufficiently 
 unbeautiful for him for one morning. 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 Inspector Howlett said: About 9:45 on 
 the morning of Tuesday, 4th December, 
 from information received, he went with 
 Sergeant Runnymede and Dr. Robinson to 
 11 Glover Street, Bow, and there found the 
 dead body of a young man, lying on his back 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 33 
 
 with his throat cut. The door of the room 
 had been smashed in, and the lock and the 
 bolt evidently forced. The room wsl^ tidy. 
 There were no marks of blood on the floor. 
 A purse full of gold was on the dressing- 
 table beside a big book. A hip-bath with 
 cold water stood beside the bed, over which 
 was a hanging bookcase. There was a large 
 wardrobe against the wall next to the door. 
 The chimney was very narrow. There were 
 two windows, one bolted. It was about 18 
 feet to the pavement. There was no way of 
 climbing up. No one could possibly have 
 got out of the room, and then bolted the 
 doors and windows behind him ; and he had 
 searched all parts of the room in which any- 
 one might have been concealed. He had 
 been unable to find any instrument in the 
 room, in spite of exhaustive search, there 
 being not even a penknife in the pockets of 
 the clothes of the deceased, which lay on a 
 chair. The house and the back yard, and the 
 adjacent pavement, had also been fruitless- 
 ly searched. 
 
 Sergeant Runnymede made an identical 
 
34 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 statement, saving only that he had gone 
 with Dr. Robinson and Inspector Howlett. 
 
 Dr. Robinson, divisional surgeon, said: 
 The deceased was lying on his back, with 
 his throat cut. The body was not yet cold, 
 the abdominal region being quite warm. 
 Rigor mortis had set in in the lower jaw, 
 neck and upper extremities. The muscles 
 contracted when beaten. I inferred that 
 life had been extinct some two or three 
 hours, probably not longer, it might have 
 been less. The bedclothes would keep the 
 lower part warm for some time. The 
 wound, which was a deep one, was 5^ inches 
 from right to left across the throat to a point 
 under the left ear. The upper portion of 
 the windpipe was severed, and likewise the 
 jugular vein. The muscular coating of the 
 carotid artery was divided. There was a 
 slight cut, as if in continuation of the 
 wound, on the thumb of the left hand. The 
 hands were clasped underneath the head. 
 There was no blood on the right hand. The 
 wound could not have been self-inflicted. A 
 sharp instrument had been used, such as a 
 razor. The cut might have been made by a 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 35 
 
 left-handed person. No doubt death was 
 practically instantaneous. I saw no signs 
 of a struggle about the body or the room. 
 I noticed a purse on the dressing-table, ly- 
 ing next to Madame Blavatsky's big book 
 on Theosophy. Sergeant Runnymede drew 
 my attention to the fact that the door had 
 evidently been locked and bolted from 
 within. 
 
 By a Juryman: I do not say the cuts 
 could not have been made by a right-handed 
 person. I can offer no suggestion as to how 
 the inflicter of the wound got in or out Ex- 
 tremely improbable that the cut was self- 
 inflicted. There was little trace of the out- 
 side fog in the room. 
 
 Police Constable Williams said he was on 
 duty in the early hours of the morning of 
 the 4th inst. Glover Street lay within his 
 beat. He saw or heard nothing suspicious. 
 The fog was never very dense, though nasty 
 to the throat. He had passed through 
 Glover Street about half -past four. He had 
 not seen Mr. Mortlake or anybody else leave 
 the house. 
 
 The Court here adjourned, the Coroner 
 
36 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 and the jury repairing in a body to 11 Glover 
 Street to view the house and the bedroom 
 of the deceased. And the evening posters 
 announced, "The Bow Mystery Thickens." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 37 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Before the inquiry was resumed, all the 
 poor wretches in custody had been released 
 on suspicion that they were innocent; there 
 was not a single case even for a magistrate. 
 Clues, which at such seasons are gathered 
 by the police like blackberries off the 
 hedges, were scanty and unripe. Inferior 
 specimens were offered them by bushels, but 
 there was not a good one among the lot. The 
 police could not even manufacture a clue. 
 
 Arthur Constant's death was already the 
 theme of every hearth, railway carriage and 
 public house. The dead idealist had points 
 of contact with so many spheres. The East 
 End and West End alike w^ere moved and 
 excited, the Democratic Leagues and the 
 Churches, the Doss-houses and the Univer- 
 sities. The pity of it! And then the im- 
 penetrable mystery of it! 
 
 The evidence given in the concluding por- 
 
38 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 tion of the investigation was necessarily 
 less sensational. There were no more wit- 
 nesses to bring the scent of blood over the 
 coroner's table; those who had yet to be 
 beard were merely relatives and friends of 
 the deceased, who spoke of him as he had 
 been in life. His parents were dead, per- 
 haps luckily for them; his relatives had 
 seen little of him, and had scarce heard as 
 much about him as the outside world. No 
 man is a prophet in his own country, and, 
 even if he migrates, it is advisable for him 
 to leave his family at home. His friends 
 were a motley crew; friends of the same 
 friend are not necessarily friends of one an- 
 other. But their diversity only made the 
 congruity of the tale they had to tell more 
 striking. It was the tale of a man who had 
 never made an enemy even by benefiting 
 him, nor lost a friend even by refusing his 
 favors ; the tale of a man whose heart over- 
 flowed with peace and good will to all men 
 all the year round; of a man to whom 
 Christmas came not once, but three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five times a year; it was the 
 tale of a brilliant intellect, who gave up to 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 39 
 
 mankind what was meant for himself, and 
 worked as a laborer in the vineyard of hu- 
 manity, never crying that the grapes were 
 sour; of a man uniformly cheerful and of 
 good courage, living in that forgetfulness 
 of self which is the truest antidote to de- 
 spair. And yet there was not quite want- 
 ing the note of pain to jar the harmony and 
 make it human. Richard Elton, his chum 
 from boyhood, and vicar of Somerton, in 
 Midlandshire, handed to the coroner a let- 
 ter from the deceased about ten days before 
 his death, containing some passages which 
 the coroner read aloud: "Do you know 
 anything of Schopenhauer? I mean any- 
 thing beyond the current misconceptions? 
 I have been making his acquaintance late- 
 ly. He is an agreeable rattle of a pessimist; 
 his essay on ^The Misery of Mankind' is quite 
 lively reading. At first his assimilation of 
 Christianity and Pessimism (it occurs in his 
 essay on ^Suicide') dazzled me as an auda- 
 cious paradox. But there is truth in it. 
 Verily, the whole creation groaneth and 
 travaileth, and man is a degraded monster, 
 and sin is over all. Ah, my friend, I have 
 
40 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 shed many of my illusions since I came to 
 this seething hive of misery and wrong- 
 doing. What shall one man's life — a mil- 
 lion men's lives — avail against the corrup- 
 tion, the vulgarity and the squalor of civili- 
 zation? Sometimes I feel like a farthing 
 rush-light in the Hall of Eblis. Selfishness 
 is so long and life so short. And the worst 
 of it is that everybody is so beastly content- 
 ed. The poor no more desire comfort than 
 the rich culture. The woman to whom a 
 penny school fee for her child represents an 
 appreciable slice of her income is satisfied 
 that the rich we shall always have with us. 
 "The real crusted old Tories are the paup- 
 ers in the Workhouse. The Kadical work- 
 ing men are jealous of their own leaders, 
 and the leaders of one another. Schopen- 
 hauer must have organized a labor party in 
 his salad days. And yet one can't help feel- 
 ing that he committed suicide as a philoso- 
 pher by not committing it as a man. He 
 claims kinship with Buddha, too; though 
 Esoteric Buddhism at least seems spheres 
 removed from the philosophy of ^The Will 
 and the Idea.' What a wonderful woman 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 41 
 
 Madame Blavatsky must be. I can't say I 
 follow her, for she is up in the clouds nearly 
 all the time, and I haven't as yet developed 
 an astral body. Shall I send you on her 
 book? It is fascinating. ... I am be- 
 coming quite a fluent orator. One soon gets 
 into the way of it. The horrible thing is 
 that you catch yourself saying things to 
 lead up to ^Cheers' instead of sticking to the 
 plain realities of the business, Lucy is still 
 doing the galleries in Italy. It used to pain 
 me sometimes to think of my darling's hap- 
 piness when I came across a flat-chested 
 factory girl. Now I feel her happiness is 
 as important as a factory girl's." 
 
 Lucy, the witness explained, was Lucy 
 Brent, the betrothed of the deceased. The 
 poor girl had been telegraphed for, and had 
 started for England. The witness stated 
 that the outburst of despondency in this let- 
 ter was almost a solitary one, most of the 
 letters in his possession being bright, buoy- 
 ant and hopeful. Even this letter ended 
 with a humorous statement of the writer's 
 manifold' plans and projects for the new 
 year. The deceased was a good Churchman. 
 
42 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Coroner: Was there any private trouble 
 in his own life to account for the temporary 
 despondency? 
 
 Witness: Not so far as I am aware. His 
 financial position was exceptionally favor- 
 able. 
 
 Coroner : There had been no quarrel with 
 Miss Brent? 
 
 Witness: I have the best authority for 
 saying that no shadow of difference had 
 ever come between them. 
 
 Coroner: Was the deceased left-handed? 
 
 Witness: Certainly not. He was not 
 even ambidextrous. 
 
 A Juryman: Isn't Shoppinhour one of 
 the infidel writers, published by the Free- 
 thought Publication Society? 
 
 Witness: I do not know who publishes 
 his books. 
 
 The Juryman (a small grocer and big raw- 
 boned Scotchman, rejoicing in the name of 
 Sandy Sanderson and the dignities of dea- 
 conry and membership of the committee of 
 the Bow Conservative Association): No 
 equeevocation, sir. Is he not a secularist, 
 who has lectured at the Hall of Science? 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 43 
 
 Witness: No, he is a foreign writer — 
 (Mr. Sanderson was heard to thank Heaven 
 for this small mercy) — who believes that 
 life is not worth living. 
 
 The Juryman: Were you not shocked to 
 find the friend of a meenister reading such 
 impure leeterature? 
 
 Witness: The deceased read everything. 
 Schopenhauer is the author of a system of 
 philosophy, and not what you seem to im- 
 agine. Perhaps you would like to inspect 
 the book? (Laughter.) 
 
 The Juryman : I would na' touch it with 
 a pitchfork. Such books should be burnt. 
 And this Madame Blavatsky's book — what 
 is that? Is that also pheelosophy? 
 
 Witness: No. It is Theosophy. (Laugh- 
 ter.) 
 
 Mr. Allen Smith, secretary of the Tram- 
 men^s Union, stated that he had had an in- 
 terview with the deceased on the day before 
 his death, when he (the deceased) spoke 
 hopefully of the prospects of the movement, 
 and wrote him out a check for 10 guineas 
 for his union. Deceased promised to speak 
 at a meeting called for a quarter past seven 
 a. m. the next day. 
 
 4 
 
44 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Mr. Edward Wimp, of the Scotland Yard 
 Detective Department, said that the letters 
 and papers of the deceased threw no light 
 upon the manner of his death, and they 
 would be handed back to the famil}^ His 
 Department had not formed smj theory on 
 the subject. 
 
 The Coroner proceeded to sum up the evi- 
 dence. "We have to deal, gentlemen," he 
 said, "with a most incomprehensible and 
 mysterious case, the details of which are 
 yet astonishingly simple. On the morning 
 of Tuesda^^, the 4th inst., Mrs. Drabdump, 
 a worthy, hard-working widow, who lets 
 lodgings at 11 Grover Street, Bow, was un- 
 able to arouse the deceased, who occupied 
 the entire upper floor of the house. Be- 
 coming alarmed, she went across to fetch 
 Mr. George Grodman, a gentleman known 
 to us all by reputation, and to whose clear 
 and scientific evidence we are much indebt- 
 ed, and got him to batter in the door. They 
 found the deceased lying back in bed with 
 a deep wound in his throat. Life had only 
 recently become extinct. There was no 
 trace of any instrument by which the cut 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 45 
 
 could have been effected ; there was no trace 
 of any person who could have effected the 
 cut. No person could apparently have got 
 in or out. The medical evidence goes to 
 show that the deceased could not have in- 
 flicted the wound himself. And yet, gentle- 
 men, there are, in the nature of things, two 
 — and only two — alternative explanations 
 of his death. Either the wound was inflict- 
 ed by his own hand, or it was inflicted by 
 another's. I shall take each of these pos- 
 sibilities separatel}^ First, did the de- 
 ceased commit suicide? The medical evi- 
 dence says deceased was lying with his 
 hands clasped behind his head. Now the 
 wound was made from right to left, and 
 terminated by a cut on the left thumb. If 
 the deceased had made it he would have had 
 to do it with his right hand, while his left 
 hand remained under his head — a most pe- 
 culiar and unnatural position to assume. 
 Moreover, in making a cut with the right 
 hand, one would naturally move the hand 
 from left to right. It is unlikely that the 
 deceased would move his right hand so awk- 
 wardly and unnaturally, unless, of course, 
 
46 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 his object was to baffle suspicion. Another 
 point is that on this hypothesis, the de- 
 ceased would have had to replace his right 
 hand beneath his head. But Dr. Robinson 
 believes that death was instantaneous. If 
 so, deceased could have had no time to pose 
 so neatly. It is just possible the cut was 
 made with the left hand, but then the de- 
 ceased was right-handed. The absence of 
 any signs of a possible weapon undoubted- 
 ly goes to corroborate the medical evidence. 
 The police have made an exhaustive search 
 in all places where the razor or other 
 weapon or instrument might by any pos- 
 sibility have been concealed, including the 
 bedclothes, the mattress, the pillow, and 
 the street into which it might have been 
 dropped. But all theories involving the 
 willful concealment of the fatal instrument 
 have to reckon with the fact or probability 
 that death was instantaneous, also with the 
 fact that there was no blood about the floor. 
 Finally, the instrument used was in all like- 
 lihood a razor, and the deceased did not 
 shave, and was never known to be in pos- 
 session of any such instrument. If, then, 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 47 
 
 we were to confine ourselves to the medical 
 and police evidence, there would, I think, 
 be little hesitation in dismissing the idea of 
 suicide. Nevertheless, it is well to forget 
 the physical aspect of the case for a moment 
 and to apply our minds to an unprejudiced 
 inquiry into the mental aspect of it. Was 
 there any reason why the deceased should 
 wish to take his own life? He was young, 
 wealthy and popular, loving and loved; life 
 stretched fair before him. He had no vices. 
 Plain living, high thinking, and noble doing 
 were the three guiding stars of his life. If 
 he had had ambition, an illustrious public 
 career was within reach. He was an orator 
 of no mean power, a brilliant and industri- 
 ous man. His outlook was always on the 
 future — he was always sketching out ways 
 in which he could be useful to his fellov/- 
 men. His purse and his time were ever at 
 the command of whosoever could show fair 
 claim upon them. If such a man were likely 
 to end his own life, the science of human 
 nature would be at an end. Still, some of 
 the shadows of the picture have been pre- 
 sented to us. The man had his moments of 
 
48 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 despondency — as which of us has not? But 
 they seem to have been few and passing. 
 Anyhow, he was cheerful enough on the day 
 before his death. He was suffering, too, 
 from toothache. But it does not seem to 
 have been violent, nor did he complain. 
 Possibly, of course, the pain became very 
 acute in the night. Nor must we forget that 
 he may have overworked himself, and got 
 his nerves into a morbid state. He worked 
 very hard, never rising later than half-past 
 seven, and doing far more than the profes- 
 sional 'labor leader/ He taught and wrote 
 as well as spoke and organized. But on the 
 other hand all witnesses agree that he was 
 looking forward eagerly to the meeting of 
 tram-men on the morning of the 4th inst. 
 His whole heart was in the movement. Is 
 it likely that this was the night he would 
 choose for quitting the scene of his useful- 
 ness? Is it likely that if he had chosen it, 
 he would not have left letters and a state- 
 ment behind, or made a last will and testa- 
 ment? Mr. Wimp has found no possible 
 clue to such conduct in his papers. Or is it 
 likely he would have concealed the instru- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 49 
 
 ment? The only positive sign of intention 
 is the bolting of his door in addition to the 
 nsual locking of it, but one cannot lay much 
 stress on that. Kegarding the mental as- 
 pects alone, the balance is largely against 
 suicide; looking at the physical aspects, 
 suicide is well nigh impossible. Putting the 
 two together, the case against suicide is all 
 but mathematically complete. The answer, 
 then, to our first question, Did the deceased 
 commit suicide? is, that he did not." 
 
 The coroner paused, and everybody drew 
 a long breath. The lucid exposition had 
 been followed with admiration. If the cor- 
 oner had stopped now, the jury would have 
 unhesitatingly returned a verdict of "mur- 
 der." But the coroner swallowed a mouth- 
 ful of water and w^ent on. 
 
 "We now come to the second alternative 
 — was the deceased the victim of homicide? 
 In order to answer that question in; the 
 affirmative it is essential that we should 
 be able to form some conception of the 
 modus operandi. It is all very well for Dr. 
 Eobinson to say the cut was made by nn- 
 other hand; but in the absence of any 
 
50 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 theory as to how the cut could possibly have 
 been made by that other hand, we should be 
 driven back to the theory of self-infliction, 
 however improbable it may seem to medical 
 gentlemen. Now, what are the facts? 
 When Mrs. Drabdump and Mr. Grodman 
 found the body it was yet warm, and Mr. 
 Grodman, a witness fortunately qualified 
 by special experience, states that death had 
 been quite recent. This tallies closely 
 enough with the view of Dr. Robinson, who, 
 examining the body about an hour later, 
 put the time of death at two or three 
 hours before, say seven o'clock. Mrs. Drab- 
 dump had attempted to wake the deceased 
 at a quarter to seven, which would put back 
 the act to a little earlier. As I understand 
 from Dr. Robinson, that it is impossible to 
 fix the time very precisely, death may have 
 very well taken place several hours before 
 Mrs. Drabdump's first attempt to wake de- 
 ceased. Of course, it may have taken place 
 between the first and second calls, as he may 
 merely have been sound asleep at first; 
 it may also not impossibly have taken place 
 considerably earlier than the first call, 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 51 
 
 for all the physical data seem to prove. 
 Nevertheless, on the whole, I think we shall 
 be least likely to err if we assume the time 
 of death to be half-past six. Gentlemen, let 
 us picture to ourselves No. 11 Glover Street 
 at half -past six. We have seen the house; 
 we know exactly how it is constructed. On 
 the ground floor a front room tenanted by 
 Mr. Mortlake, with two windows giving on 
 the street, both securely bolted; a back 
 room occupied by the landlady; and a 
 kitchen. Mrs. Drabdump did not leave her 
 bedroom till half-past six, so that we may 
 be sure all the various doors and windows 
 have not yet been unfastened; while the 
 season of the year is su guarantee that noth- 
 ing had been left open. The front door 
 through which Mr. Mortlake has gone out 
 before half-past four, is guarded by the 
 latchkey lock and the big lock. On the 
 upper floor are two rooms — a front room 
 used by deceased for a bedroom, and a back 
 room which he used as a sitting-room. The 
 back room has been left open, with the key 
 inside, but the window is fastened. The 
 door of the front room is not only locked, but 
 
52 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 bolted. We have seen the splintered mor- 
 tise and the staple of the upper bolt violent- 
 ly forced from the woodwork and resting on 
 the pin. The windows are bolted, the 
 fasteners being firmly fixed in the catches. 
 The chimney is too narrow to admit of the 
 passage of even a cliild. This room, in fact, 
 is as firmly barred in as if besieged. It has 
 no communication with any other part of 
 the house. It is as absolutely self-centered 
 and isolated as if it were a fort in the sea 
 or a log-hut in the forest. Even if any 
 strange person is in the house, nay, in the 
 very sitting-room of the deceased, he can- 
 not get into the bedroom, for the house 
 is one built for the poor, with no com- 
 munication between the different rooms, 
 so that separate families, if need be, 
 may inhabit each. Now, however, let 
 us grant that some person has achieved 
 the miracle of getting into the front 
 room, first floor, 18 feet from the ground. 
 At half-past six, or thereabouts, he 
 cuts the throat of the sleeping occupant. 
 How is he then to get out without attract- 
 ing the attention of the now roused land- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 53 
 
 lady? But let us concede him that miracle, 
 too. How is he to go away and yet leave the 
 doors and windows locked and bolted from 
 within? This is a degree of miracle at 
 which my credulity must draw the line. No, 
 the room had been closed all night — ^there 
 is scarce a trace of fog in it. No one could 
 get in or out. Finally, murders do not take 
 place without motive. Robbery and revenge 
 are the only conceivable motives. The de- 
 ceased had not an enemy in the world; his 
 money and valuables were left untouched. 
 Everything was in order. There were no 
 signs of a struggle. The answer then to our 
 second inquiry — was the deceased killed by 
 another person? — is, that he was not. 
 
 "Gentlemen, I am aware that this sounds 
 impossible and contradictory. But it is the 
 facts that contradict themselves. It seems 
 clear that the deceased did not commit sui- 
 cide. It seems equally clear that the de- 
 ceased was not murdered. There is noth- 
 ing for it, therefore, gentlemen, but to re- 
 turn a verdict tantamount to an acknowl- 
 edgment of our incompetence to come to 
 any adequately grounded conviction what- 
 
54 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 ever as to the means or the manner by 
 which the deceased met his death. It is the 
 most inexplicable mystery in all my experi- 
 ence." (Sensation.) 
 
 The Foreman (after a colloquy with Mr. 
 Sandy Sanderson) : We are not agreed, sir. 
 One of the jurors insists on a verdict of 
 *'Death from visitation by the act of God.^^ 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 But Sandy Sanderson's burning solici- 
 tude to fix the crime flickered out in the face 
 of opposition, and in the end he bowed his 
 head to the inevitable "open verdict." Then 
 the floodgates of inkland were opened, and 
 the deluge pattered for nine days on the 
 deaf coffin where the poor idealist mold- 
 ered. The tongues of the Press were loos- 
 ened, and the leader writers reveled in 
 recapitulating the circumstances of "The 
 Big Bow Mystery," though they could con- 
 tribute nothing but adjectives to the solu- 
 tion. The papers teemed with letters — it 
 was a kind of Indian summer of the silly 
 season. But the editors could not keep 
 them out, nor cared to. The mystery was 
 the one topic of conversation everywhere — 
 it was on the carpet and the bare boards 
 alike, in the kitchen and the drawing-room. 
 It was discussed with science or stupidity. 
 
56 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 with aspirates or without. It came up for 
 breakfast with the rolls, and was swept off 
 the supper table with the last crumbs. 
 
 No. 11 Glover Street, Bow, remained for 
 days a shrine of pilgrimage. The once 
 sleepy little street buzzed from morning till 
 night. From all parts of the town people 
 came to stare up at the bedroom window 
 and wonder with a foolish look of horror. 
 The pavement was often blocked for hours 
 together, and itinerant vendors of refresh- 
 ment made it a new market center, while 
 vocalists hastened thither to sing the de-^ 
 lectable ditty of the deed without having 
 any voice in the matter. It was a pity the 
 Government did not erect a toll-gate at 
 either end of the street. But Chancellors 
 of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves 
 of the more obvious expedients for paying 
 off the National debt. 
 
 Finally, familiarity bred contempt, and 
 the wits grew facetious at the expense of the 
 Mystery. Jokes on the subject appeared 
 even in the comic papers. 
 
 To the proverb, "You must not say Bo 
 to a goose," one added, "or else she will ex- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 57 
 
 plain you the Mystery." The name of the 
 gentleman who asked whether the Bow 
 Mystery was not 'arrowing shall not be di- 
 vulged. There was more point in "Dago- 
 net's" remark that, if he had been one of the 
 unhappy jurymen, he should have been 
 driven to "suicide." A professional para- 
 dox-monger pointed triumphantly to the 
 somewhat similar situation in "the murder 
 in the Rue Morgue," and said that Nature 
 had been plagiarizing again — like the mon- 
 key she was — and he recommended Poe's 
 publishers to apply for an injunction. More 
 seriously, Poe's solution was re-suggested 
 by "Constant Reader" as an original idea. 
 He thought that a small organ-grinder's 
 monkey might have got down the chimney 
 with its master's razor, and, after attempt- 
 ing to shave the occiTpant of the bed, have 
 returned the way it came. This idea creat- 
 ed considerable sensation, but a corre- 
 spondent with a long train of letters drag- 
 gling after his name pointed out that a mon- 
 key small enough to get down so narrow a 
 flue would not be strong enough to inflict 
 so deep a wound. This was disputed by a 
 
58 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 third writer, and the contest raged so keen- 
 ly about the power of monkeys' muscles that 
 it was almost taken for granted that a 
 monkey was the guilty party. The bubble 
 was pricked by the pen of "Common Sense," 
 who laconically remarked that no traces of 
 soot or blood had been discovered on the 
 floor, or on the nightshirt, or the counter- 
 pane. The "Lancet's" leader on the Mys- 
 tery was awaited with interest. It said: 
 "We cannot join in the praises that have 
 been showered upon the coroner's summing 
 up. It shows again the evils resulting from 
 having coroners who are not medical men. 
 He seems to have appreciated but in- 
 adequately the significance of the med- 
 ical evidence. He should certainly have 
 directed the jury to return a verdict 
 of murder on that. What was it to do 
 with him that he could see no way by 
 which the wound could have been in- 
 flicted by an outside agency? It was for 
 the police to find how that was done. 
 Enough that it was impossible for the un- 
 happy young man to have inflicted such a 
 wound and then have strength and will 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 59 
 
 power enough to hide the instrument and 
 to remove perfectly every trace of his hav- 
 ing left the bed for the purpose." It is im- 
 possible to enumerate all the theories pro- 
 pounded by the amateur detectives, while 
 Scotland Yard religiously held its tongue. 
 Ultimately the interest on the subject be- 
 came confined to a few papers which had re- 
 ceived the best letters. Those papers that 
 couldn't get interesting letters stopped the 
 correspondence and sneered at the "sensa- 
 tionalism" of those that could. Among the 
 mass of fantasy there were not a few not- 
 able solutions, which failed brilliantly, like 
 rockets posing as fixed stars. One was that 
 in the obscurity of the fog the murderer 
 had ascended to the window of the 
 bedroom by means of a ladder from 
 the pavement. He had then with a dia- 
 mond cut one of the panes away, and 
 effected an entry through the aperture. 
 On leaving he fixed in the pane of glass 
 again (or another which he had brought 
 with him), and thus the room remained 
 with its bolts and locks untouched. On 
 its being pointed out that the panes were 
 
60 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 too small, a third correspondent showed 
 that that didn't matter, as it was only neces- 
 sary to insert the hand and undo the fasten- 
 ing, when the entire window could be 
 opened, the process being reversed by the 
 murderer on leaving. This pretty edifice 
 of glass was smashed by a glazier, who 
 wrote to say that a pane could hardly be 
 fixed in from only one side of a window 
 frame, that it would fall out when touched, 
 and that in any case the wet putty could 
 not have escaped detection. A door panel 
 sliced out and replaced was also put for- 
 ward, and as many trap-doors and secret 
 passages were ascribed to No. 11 Glover 
 Street as if it were a medieval castle. An- 
 other of these clever theories was that the 
 murderer was in the room the whole time 
 the police were there — hidden in the ward- 
 robe. Or he had got behind the door when 
 Grodman broke it open, so that he was not 
 noticed in the excitement of the discovery, 
 and escaped with his weapon at the mo- 
 ment when Grodman and Mrs. Drabdump 
 were examining the window fastenings. 
 Scientific explanations also were to hand 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 61 
 
 to explain how the assassin locked and bolt- 
 ed the door behind him. Powerful magnets 
 outside the door had been used to turn the 
 key and push the bolt within. Murderers 
 armed with magnets loomed on the popular 
 imagination like a new microbe. There was 
 only one defect in this ingenious theory — 
 the thing could not be done. A physiolo- 
 gist recalled the conjurers who swallowed 
 swords — by an anatomical peculiarity of 
 the throat — and said that the deceased 
 might have swallowed the weapon after 
 cutting his own throat. This was too much 
 for the public to swallow. As for the idea 
 that the suicide had been effected with a 
 penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which 
 had got buried in the w^ound, not even the 
 quotation of Shelley's line : 
 
 "Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it," 
 
 could secure it a moment's acceptance. The 
 same reception was accorded to the idea 
 that the cut had been made with a candle- 
 stick (or other harmless article) constructed 
 like a sword-stick. Theories of this sort 
 caused a humorist to explain that the de- 
 ceased had hidden the razor in his hollow 
 
62 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 tooth! Some kind friend of Messrs. Mas- 
 kelyne and Cook suggested that they were 
 the only persons who could have done the 
 deed, as no one else could get out of a locked 
 cabinet. But perhaps the most brilliant of 
 these flashes of false fire was the facetious, 
 jet probably half-seriously meant, letter 
 that appeared in the "Pell Mell Press" un- 
 der the heading of 
 
 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED. 
 
 "Sir — You will remember that when the 
 Whitechapel murders were agitating the 
 universe, I suggested that the district cor- 
 oner was the assassin. My suggestion has 
 been disregarded. The coroner is still at 
 large. So is the Whitechapel murderer. 
 Perhaps this suggestive coincidence will in- 
 cline the authorities to pay more attention 
 to me this time. The problem seems to be 
 this. The deceased could not have cut his 
 own throat. The deceased could not have 
 had his throat cut for him. As one 
 of the two must have happened, this 
 is obvious nonsense. As this is obvious 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 63 
 
 nonsense I am justified in disbeliev- 
 ing it. As this obvious nonsense was 
 primarily put in circulation by Mrs. 
 Drabdump and Mr. Grodman, I am justified 
 in disbelieving them. In short, sir, what 
 guarantee have we that the whole tale is 
 not a cock-and-bull story, invented by the 
 two persons who first found the body? 
 What proof is there that the deed was not 
 done by these persons themselves, who then 
 went to work to smash the door and break 
 the locks and the bolts, and fasten up all the 
 windows before they called the police in? 
 I enclose my card, and am, sir, yours truly, 
 One Who Looks Through His Own Spec- 
 tacles." 
 
 ("Our correspondent's theory is not so au- 
 daciously original as he seems to imagine. 
 Has he not looked through the spectacles of 
 the people who persistently suggested that 
 the Whitechapel murderer was invariably 
 the policeman who found the body? Some- 
 body must find the body, if it is to be found 
 at all.— Ed. P. M. P.") 
 
 The editor had reason to be pleased that 
 he inserted this letter, for it drew the follow- 
 
64 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 ing interesting communication from the 
 great detective himself: 
 
 "THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED. 
 
 "Sir — I do not agree with you that your 
 correspondent's theory lacks originality. 
 On the contrary, I think it is delight- 
 fully original. In fact it has given me 
 an idea. What that idea is I do not 
 yet propose to say, but if ^One Who 
 Looks Through His Own Spectacles' will 
 favor me with his name and address I 
 shall be happy to inform him a little 
 before the rest of the world whether his 
 germ has borne any fruit. I feel he is a 
 kindred spirit, and take this opportunity of 
 saying publicly that I was extremely dis- 
 appointed at the unsatisfactory verdict. 
 The thing was a palpable assassination ; an 
 open verdict has a tendency to relax the ex- 
 ertions of Scotland Yard. I hope I shall not 
 be accused of immodesty, or of making per- 
 sonal reflections, when I say that the De- 
 partment has had several notorious failures 
 of late. It is not what it used to be. Crime 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 65 
 
 is becoming impertinent. It no longer 
 knows its place, so to speak. It throws 
 down the gauntlet where once it used to 
 cower in its fastnesses. I repeat, I make 
 these remarks solely in the interest of law 
 and order. I do not for one moment believe 
 that Arthur Constant killed himself, and if 
 Scotland Yard satisfies itself with that ex- 
 planation, and turns on its other side and 
 goes to sleep again, then, sir, one of the foul- 
 est and most horrible crimes of the century 
 will forever go unpunished. My acquaint- 
 ance with the unhappy victim was but re- 
 cent; still, I saw and knew enough of the 
 man to be certain (and I hope I have seen 
 and known enougJi of other men to judge) 
 that he was a man constitutionally inca- 
 pable of committing an act of violence, 
 whether against himself or anybody else. 
 He would not hurt a fly, as the saying goes. 
 And a man of that gentle stamp always 
 lacks the active energy to lay hands on him- 
 self. He was a man to be esteemed in no 
 common degree, and I feel proud to be able 
 to say that he considered me a friend. I am 
 hardlv at the time of life at which a man 
 
66 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 cares to put on his harness again; but, sir, 
 it is impossible that I should ever know a 
 daj^s rest till the perpetrator of this foul 
 deed is discovered. I have already put my- 
 self in communication with the family of 
 the victim, who, I am pleased to say, have 
 every confidence in me, and look to me to 
 clear the name of their unhappy relative 
 from the semi-imi)utation of suicide. I shall 
 be pleased if anyone who shares my distrust 
 of the authorities, and who has any clue 
 whatever to this terrible mystery, or any 
 plausible suggestion to offer, if, in brief, 
 any ^One who looks through his own 
 spectacles' will communicate with me. If 
 I were asked to indicate the direc- 
 tion in which new clues might be 
 most usefully sought, I should say, in 
 the first instance, anything is valuable 
 that helps us to piece together a com- 
 plete picture of the manifold activities of 
 the man in the East End. He entered one 
 way or another into the lives of a good many 
 people; is it true that he nowhere made 
 enemies? With the best intentions a man 
 may wound or offend ; his interference may 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 67 
 
 be resented; he may even excite jealousy. 
 A young man like the late Mr. Constant 
 could not have had as much practical saga- 
 city as he had goodness. Whose corns did 
 he tread on? The more we know of the last 
 few months of his life the more we shall 
 know of the manner of his death. Thank- 
 ing you by anticipation for the insertion of 
 this letter in your valuable columns, I am, 
 sir, yours truly, 
 
 "George Grodman. 
 "46 Glover Street, Bow." 
 
 "P. S. — Since writing the above lines I 
 have, by the kindness of Miss Brent, been 
 placed in possession of a most valuable let- 
 ter, probably the last letter written by the 
 unhappy gentleman. It is dated Monday, 
 3 December, the very eve of the murder, 
 and was addressed to her at Florence, and 
 has now, after some delay, followed her 
 back to London where the sad news unex- 
 pectedly brought her. It is a letter couched, 
 on the whole, in the most hopeful spirit, and 
 speaks in detail of his schemes. Of course, 
 there are things in it not meant for the ears 
 
68 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 of the public, but there can be no harm in 
 transcribing an important passage: 
 
 " 'You seem to have imbibed the idea that 
 the East End is a kind of Golgotha, and this 
 despite that the books out of which you 
 probably got it are carefully labeled "Fic- 
 tion." Lamb says somevf here that we think 
 of the "Dark Ages" as literally without sun- 
 light, and so I fancy people like you, dear, 
 think of the "East End" as a mixture of 
 mire, misery and murder. How's that for 
 alliteration? Why, within five minutes' 
 walk of me there are the loveliest houses, 
 with gardens back and front, inhabited by 
 very fine people and furniture. Many of my 
 university friends' mouths would water if 
 they knew the income of some of the shop- 
 keepers in the High Road. 
 
 a in^^Q Y^^i^ people about here may not be 
 so fashionable as those in Kensington and 
 Bayswater, but they are every bit as stupid 
 and materialistic, I don't deny, Lucy, I do 
 have my black moments, and I do sometimes 
 pine to get away from all this to the lands 
 of sun and lotus-eating. But, on the whole, 
 I am too busy even to dream of dreaming. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 69 
 
 My real black moments are when I doubt if 
 I am really doing any good. But yet on 
 the whole my conscience or my self-conceit 
 tells me that I am. If one cannot do much 
 with the mass, there is at least the consola- 
 tion of doing good to the individual. And, 
 after all, is it not enough to have been an 
 influence for good over one or tw^o human 
 souls ? There are quite fine characters here- 
 about — especially in the w^omen — natures 
 capable not only of self-sacrifice, but of deli- 
 cacy of sentiment. To have learnt to know 
 of such, to have been of service to one or two 
 of such — is not this ample return? I could 
 not get to St. James' Hall to hear your 
 friend's symphony at the Henschel concert. 
 I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's lat- 
 est book, and getting quite interested in 
 occult philosophy. Unfortunately I have 
 to do all my reading in bed, and I don't find 
 the book as soothing a soporific as most new 
 books. For keeping one awake I find The- 
 osophy as bad as toothache. . . . ' " 
 
70 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED. 
 
 "Sir — I wonder if anyone besides myself 
 has been struck by the incredible bad taste 
 of Mr. Grodman's letter in your last issue. 
 That he, a former servant of the Depart- 
 ment, should publicly insult and run it 
 down can only be charitably explained by 
 the supposition that his judgment is fail- 
 ing him in his old age. In view of this let- 
 ter, are the relatives of the deceased justi- 
 fied in entrusting him with any private doc- 
 uments? It is, no doubt, very good of him 
 to undertake to avenge one whom he seems 
 snobbishly anxious to claim as a friend; 
 but, all things considered, should not his let- 
 ter have been headed The Big Bow Mystery 
 Shelved?' I enclose my card, and am, sir, 
 "Your obedient servant, 
 
 "Scotland Yard." 
 
 George Grodman read this letter with 
 annoyance, and, crumpling up the paper, 
 murmured scornfully, "Edward Wimp." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 71 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "Yes, but what will become of the Beau- 
 tiful?" said Denzil Cantercot. 
 
 "Hang the Beautiful!" said Peter Crowl, 
 as if he were on the committee of the 
 Academy. "Give me the True." 
 
 Denzil did nothing of the sort. He didn't 
 happen to have it about him. 
 
 Denzil Cantercot stood smoking a cigar- 
 ette in his landlord's shop, and imparting 
 an air of distinction and an agreeable aroma 
 to the close leathery atmosphere. Crowl 
 cobbled away, talking to his tenant without 
 raising his eyes. He was a small, big-head- 
 ed, sallow, sad-eyed man, with a greasy 
 apron. Denzil was wearing a heavy over- 
 coat with a fur collar. He was never seen 
 without it in public during the winter. In 
 private he removed it and sat in his shirt 
 sleeves. Crowl was a thinker, or thought 
 he was — which seems to involve original 
 
72 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 thinking anyway. His hair was thinning 
 rapidly at the top, as if his brain was strug- 
 gling to get as near as possible to the reali- 
 ties of things. He prided himself on hav- 
 ing no fads. Few men are without some foi- 
 ble or hobby; Crowl felt almost lonely at 
 times in his superiority. He was a Vegeta- 
 rian, a Secularist, a Blue Ribbonite, a Re- 
 publican, and an Anti-Tobacconist. Meat 
 was a fad. Drink was a fad. Religion was 
 a fad. Monarchy was a fad. Tobacco was 
 a fad. "A plain man like me," Crowl used 
 to say, "can live without fads." "A plain 
 man" was CrowPs catchword. When of a 
 Sunday morning he stood on Mile-end 
 Waste, which was opposite his shop — and 
 held forth to the crowd on the evils of kings, 
 priests and mutton chops, the "plain man" 
 turned up at intervals like the "theme" of 
 a symphonic movement. "I am only a plain 
 man and I want to know." It was a phrase 
 that sabered the spider-webs of logical re- 
 finement, and held them up scornfully on 
 the point. When Crowl went for a little 
 recreation in Victoria Park on Sunday 
 afternoons, it was with this phrase that he 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 73 
 
 invariably routed the supernaturalists. 
 Crowl knew his Bible better than most min- 
 isters, and always carried a minutely-print- 
 ed copy in his pocket, dogs-eared to mark 
 contradictions in the text. The second i 
 chapter of Jeremiah says one tiling; the 
 first chapter of Corinthians says another. 
 Two contradictory statements may both be 
 true, but ^^I am only a plain man, and I want 
 to know." Crowl spent a large part of his 
 time in setting "the word against the word." 
 Cock-fighting affords its votaries no acuter 
 pleasure than Growl derived from setting 
 two texts by the ears. Crowl had a meta- 
 physical genius which sent his Sunday 
 morning disciples frantic with admiration, 
 and struck the enemy dumb with dis- 
 may. He had discovered, for instance, 
 that the Deity could not move, ow- 
 ing to already filling all space. He was 
 also the first to invent, for the con- 
 fusion of the clerical, the crucial case 
 of a saint dying at the Antipodes con- 
 temporaneously with another in London. 
 Both went skyward to heaven, yet the two 
 traveled in directly opposite directions. In 
 
74 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 all eternity they would never meet. Which, 
 then, got to heaven? Or was there no such 
 place? "I am only a plain man, and I want 
 to know." Preserve us our open spaces ; they 
 exist to testify to the incurable interest of 
 humanity in the Unknown and the Misun- 
 derstood. Even ^Arry is capable of five min- 
 utes' attention to speculative theology, if 
 'Arriet isn't in a 'urry. 
 
 Peter Crowl was not sorry to have a 
 lodger like Denzil Cantercot, who, though a 
 man of parts and thus worth powder and 
 shot, was so hopelessly wrong on all sub- 
 jects under the sun. In only one point did 
 Peter Crowl agree with Denzil Cantercot — 
 he admired Denzil Cantercot secretly. 
 When he asked him for the True — which 
 was about twice a day on the average — he 
 didn't really expect to get it from him. He 
 knew that Denzil was a poet. 
 
 "The Beautiful," he went on, "is a thing 
 that only appeals to men like you. The 
 True is for all men. The majority have the 
 first claim. Till then you poets must stand 
 aside. The True and the Useful — ^that's 
 what we want. The Good of Society is the 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 75 
 
 only test of things. Everything stands or 
 falls by the Good of Society. 
 
 "The Good of Society!" echoed Denzil, 
 scornfully. "What's the Good of Society? 
 The Individual is before all. The mass 
 must be sacrificed to the Great Man. Other- 
 wise the Great Man will be sacrificed to the 
 mass. Without great men there would be 
 no art. Without art life would be a blank." 
 
 "Ah, but we should fill it up with bread 
 and butter," said Peter Crowl. 
 
 "Yes, it is bread and butter that kills the 
 Beautiful," said Denzil Cantercot bitterly. 
 "Many of us start by following the butterfly 
 through the verdant meadows, but we turn 
 aside " 
 
 "To get the grub," chuckled Peter, cob- 
 bling away. 
 
 "Peter, if you make a jest of everything, 
 I'll not waste my time on you." 
 
 DenziPs wild eyes flashed angrily. He 
 shook his long hair. Life was very serious 
 to him. He never wrote comic verse inten- 
 tionally. 
 
 There are three reasons why men of 
 genins! have long hair. One is, that thej 
 
76 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 forget it is growing. The second is, that 
 they like it. The third is, that it comes 
 cheaper; they wear it long for the same 
 reason that they wear their hats long. 
 
 Owing to this peculiarity of genius, you 
 may get quite a reputation for lack of two- 
 pence. The economic reason did not apply 
 to Denzil, who could always get credit with 
 the profession on the strength of his ap- 
 pearance. Therefore, when street Arabs 
 vocally commanded him to get his hair cut, 
 they were doing no service to barbers. Why 
 does all the world watch over barbers and 
 conspire to promote their interests? Den- 
 zil would have told you it was not to serve 
 the barbers, but to gratify the crowd's in- 
 stinctive resentment of originality^ In his 
 palmy days Denzil had been an editor, but 
 he no more thought of turning his scissors 
 against himself than of swallowing his 
 paste. The efficacy of hair has changed 
 since the days of Samson, otherwise Denzil 
 would have been a Hercules instead of a 
 long, thin, nervous man, looking too brittle 
 and delicate to be used even for a pipe-clean- 
 er. The narrow oval of his face sloped to a 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 77 
 
 pointed, untrimmed beard. His linen was 
 reproachable, his dingy boots were down 
 at heel, and his cocked hat was drab with 
 dust. Such are the effects of a love for the 
 Beautiful. 
 
 Peter Crowl was impressed with DenziPs 
 condemnation of flippancy, and he hastened 
 to turn off the joke. 
 
 "Fm quite serious," he said. "Butterflies 
 are no good to nothing or nobody; caterpil- 
 lars at least save the birds from starving."' 
 
 "Just like your view of things, Peter," 
 said Denzil. "Good morning, madam." This 
 to Mrs. Crowl, to whom he removed his hat 
 with elaborate courtesy. Mrs. Crowl grunt- 
 ed and looked at her husband with a note 
 of interrogation in each eye. For some sec- 
 onds Crowl stuck to his last, endeavoring 
 not to see the question. He shifted uneasily 
 on his stool. His wife coughed grimly. 
 He looked up, saw her towering over him, 
 and helplessly shook his head in a 
 horizontal direction. It was wonderful 
 how Mrs. Crowl towered over Mr. Crowl, 
 even when he stood up in his shoes. She 
 
78 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 measured half an inch less. It was quite an 
 optical illusion. 
 
 "Mr. Crowl," said Mrs. Crowl, "then 111 
 tell him." 
 
 "No, no, my dear, not yet," faltered Peter 
 helplessly; "leave it to me." 
 
 "Fve left it to you long enough. Youll 
 never do nothing. If it was a question of 
 provin' to a lot o' chuckleheads that Jolly- 
 gee and Genesis, or some other dead and 
 gone Scripture folk that don't consaru no 
 mortal soul, used to contradict each other, 
 your tongue 'ud run thirteen to the dozen. 
 But when it's a matter of takin' the bread 
 out o' the mouths o' 3^our own children, you 
 ain't got no more to say for yourself than a 
 lamppost. Here's a man stayin' with you 
 for weeks and weeks — eat in' and drinkin' 
 the flesh off your bones — without payin' a 
 far- '' 
 
 "Hush, hush, mother; it's all right," said 
 poor Crowl, red as fire. 
 
 Denzil looked at her dreamily. "Is it pos- 
 sible you are alluding to me, Mrs. Crowl?" 
 he said. 
 
 "Who then should I be alludin' to, Mr. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 79 
 
 Cantercot? Here's seven weeks come and 
 gone, and not a blessed 'aypenny have 
 I " 
 
 "My dear Mrs. Crowl," said Denzil, re- 
 moving his cigarette from his mouth with 
 a pained air, "why reproach me for your 
 neglect?" 
 
 "My neglect! I like that!" 
 
 "I don't," said Denzil, more sharply. "If 
 you had sent me in the bill you would have 
 had the money long ago. How do you ex- 
 pect me to think of these details?" 
 
 "We ain't so grand down here. People 
 pays their way — they don't get no bills," 
 said Mrs. Crowl, accentuating the word Avith 
 infinite scorn. 
 
 Peter hammered away at a nail, as 
 though to drown his spouse's voice. 
 
 "It's three pounds fourteen and eight- 
 pence, if you're so anxious to know," Mrs. 
 Crowl resumed. "And there ain't a woman 
 in the Mile End Road as 'ud a-done it cheap- 
 er, with bread at fourpence threefarden a 
 quartern and landlords clamorin' for rent 
 every Monday morning almost afore the 
 sun's up and folks draggin' and slidderin' 
 
80 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 on till their shoes is only fit to throw after 
 brides, and Christmas comin^ and seven- 
 pence a week for schoolin'!" 
 
 Peter winced under the last item. He 
 had felt it coming — like Christmas. His 
 wife and he parted company on the ques- 
 tion of Free Education. Peter felt that, 
 having brought nine children into the 
 world, it was only fair he should pay a 
 penny a week for each of those old enough 
 to bear educating. His better half argued 
 that, having so many children, they ought 
 in reason to be exempted. Only people who 
 had few children could spare the penny. 
 But the one point on which the cobbler- 
 skeptic of the Mile End Road got his way 
 was this of the fees. It was a question of 
 conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made 
 application for their remission, though she 
 often slapped her children in vexation in- 
 stead. They were used to slapping, and 
 when nobody else slapped them they 
 slapped one another. They were bright, ill- 
 mannered brats, who pestered their parents 
 and worried their teachers, and were happy 
 as the Road was long. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 81 
 
 "Bother the school fees!" Peter retorted, 
 vexed. "Mr. Cantercot's not responsible for 
 jour children." 
 
 "I should hope not, indeed, Mr. Crowl," 
 Mrs. Crowl said sternly. "I'm ashamed of 
 you." And with that she flounced out of the 
 shop into the back parlor. 
 
 "It's all right," I'eter called after her 
 soothingly. "The money'll be all right, 
 mother."^ 
 
 In lower circles it is customary to call 
 your wife your mother; in somewhat su- 
 perior circles it is the fashion to speak of 
 her as "the wife" as you speak of "the Stock 
 Exchange," or "the Thames," without claim- 
 ing any peculiar property. Instinctively 
 men are ashamed of being moral and do- 
 mesticated. 
 
 Denzil puffed his cigarette, unembar- 
 rassed. Peter bent attentively over his 
 work, making nervous stabs with his awl. 
 There was a long silence. An organ-grinder 
 played a waltz outside, unregarded; and, 
 failing to annoy anybody, moved on. Denzil 
 lit another cigarette. The dirty-faced clock 
 on the shop wall chimed twelve. 
 
82 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "What do you think," said Growl, "of Re- 
 publics?" 
 
 "They are low," Denzil replied. "With- 
 out a Monarch there is no visible incarna- 
 tion of Authority." 
 
 "What! do you call Queen Victoria visi- 
 ble?" 
 
 "Peter, do you want to drive me from the 
 house? Leave frivolousness to v/omen, 
 whose minds are only large enough for do 
 mestic difficulties. Republics are low. 
 Plato mercifully kept the poets out of his. 
 Republics are not congenial soil for poetry." 
 
 "What nonsense! If England dropped its 
 fad of Monarchy and became a Republic 
 to-morrow, do you mean to say that ?" 
 
 "I mean to say that there would be no 
 Poet Laureate to begin with." 
 
 "Who's fribbling now, you or me. Canter- 
 cot? But I don't care a button-hook about 
 poets, present company always excepted. 
 Pm only a plain man, and I want to know 
 Where's the sense of givin' any one person 
 authority over everybody else?" 
 
 "Ah, that's what Tom Mortlake used to 
 say. Wait till you're in power, Peter, with 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 83 
 
 trade-union money to control, and working 
 men bursting to give you flying angels and 
 to carry you aloft, like a banner, huzzali- 
 ing." 
 
 "Ah, that's because he^s head and shoul- 
 ders above 'em already," said Crowl, with 
 a flash in his sad gray eyes. "Still, it don't 
 prove that I'd talk any different. And I 
 think you're quite wrong about his being 
 spoiled. Tom's a fine fellow — a man every 
 inch of him, and that's a good many. I don't 
 deny he has his weaknesses, and there was 
 a time when he stood in this very shop and 
 denounced that poor dead Constant. 
 *Crow],' said he, ^that man'll do mischief. I 
 don't like these kid-glove philanthropists 
 mixing themselves up in practical labor dis- 
 putes they don't understand.' " 
 
 Denzil whistled involuntarily. It was a 
 piece of news. 
 
 "I daresay,'^ continued Crowl, "he's a bit 
 jealous of anybody's interference with his 
 influence. But in this case the jealousy did 
 wear off, you see, for the poor fallow and he 
 got quite pals, as everybody knows. Tom's 
 not the man to hug a prejudice. However, 
 
84 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 all that don't prove nothing against Eepub- 
 lics. Look at the Czar and the Jews. I'm 
 only a plain man, but I wouldn't live in 
 Russia not for — not for all the leather in it ! 
 An Englishman, taxed as he is to keep up 
 his Fad of Monarchy, is at least king in his 
 own castle, whoever bosses it at Windsor. 
 Excuse me a minute, the missus is callin'." 
 
 "Excuse me a minute. I'm going, and I 
 want to say before I go — I feel it is only 
 right you should know at once — that after 
 what has passed to-day I can never be on 
 the same footing here as in the — shall I say 
 pleasant? — days of yore." 
 
 "Oh, no, Cantercot. Don't say that; don't 
 say that !" pleaded the little cobbler. 
 
 "Well, shall I say unpleasant, then?" 
 
 "No, no, Cantercot. Don'^t misunderstand 
 me. Mother has been very much put to it 
 lately to rub along. You see she has such a 
 growing family. It grows — daily. But 
 never mind her. You pay whenever you've 
 got the nione}^" 
 
 Denzil shook his head. "It cannot be. 
 You know when I came here first I rented 
 your top room and boarded myself. Then 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 85 
 
 T learnt to know you. We talked together. 
 Of the Beautiful. And the Useful. I found 
 you had no soul. But you were honest, and 
 I liked you. I went so far as to take my 
 meals with your family. I made myself at 
 home in your back parlor. But the vase has 
 been shattered (I do not refer to that on 
 the mantelpiece), and though the scent of 
 the roses may cling to it still, it can be 
 pieced together — nevermore." He shook 
 his hair sadly and shambled out of the shop. 
 Crowl would have gone after him, but Mrs. 
 Crowl was still calling, and ladies must 
 have the precedence in all polite societies. 
 
 Cantercot went straight — or as straight 
 as his loose gait permitted — to 46 Glover 
 Street, and knocked at the door. Grodman's 
 factotum opened it. She was a pock- 
 marked person, with a brickdust complex- 
 ion and a coquettish manner. 
 
 "Oh, here we are again!" she said viva- 
 ciously. 
 
 "Don't talk like a clown," Cantercot 
 snapped. "Is Mr. Grodman in?" 
 
 "No, you've put him out," growled the 
 gentleman himself, suddenly appearing in 
 
86 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 his slippers. "Come in. Wliat the devil 
 have you been doing with yourself since the 
 inquest? Drinking again?" 
 
 "I've sworn off. Haven't touched a drop 
 since ^" 
 
 "The murder?" 
 
 "Eh?" said Denzil Cantercot, startled. 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "What I say. Since December 4, 1 reckon 
 everything from that murder, now, as they 
 reckon longitude from Greenwich." 
 
 "Oh," said Denzil Cantercot. 
 
 "Let me see. Nearly a fortnight. What a 
 long time to keep away from Drink — and 
 Me." 
 
 "I don't know which is worse," said Den- 
 zil, irritated. "You both steal away my 
 brains." 
 
 "Indeed?" said Grodman, with an amused 
 smile. "Well, it's only petty pilfering, after 
 all. What's put salt on your wounds?" 
 
 "The twenty-fourth edition of my book." 
 
 "Whose book?" 
 
 "Well, your book. You must be making 
 piles of money out of ^Criminals I Have 
 Caught.' " 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 87 
 
 " 'Criminals / Have Caught/ '' corrected 
 Grodman. "My dear Denzil, how often am I 
 to point out that I went through the ex- 
 periences that make the backbone of my 
 book, not you? In each case I cooked the 
 (•riminaPs goose. Any journalist could have 
 supplied the dressing. '^ 
 
 "The contrary. The journeymen of jour- 
 nalism would have left the truth naked. 
 You yourself could have done that — for 
 there is no man to beat you at cold, lucid, 
 scientific statement. But I idealized the 
 bare facts and lifted them into the realm of 
 poetry and literature. The twenty-fourth 
 edition of the book attests my success." 
 
 "Rot ! The twenty-fourth edition was all 
 owing to the murder! Did you do that?" 
 
 "You take one up so sharply, Mr. Grod- 
 man," said Denzil, changing his tone. 
 
 "No — Pve retired," laughed Grodman. 
 
 Denzil did not reprove the ex-detective's 
 flippancy. He even laughed a little. 
 
 "Well, give me another fiver, and I'll cry 
 ^quits.' Fm in debt." 
 
 "Not a penny. Why haven't you been to 
 see me since the murder? I had to write 
 
 7 
 
88 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 that letter to the Tell Mell Press^ myself. 
 You might have earned a crown." 
 
 "IVe had writer's cramp, and couldn't do 
 your last job. I was coming to tell you so 
 on the morning of the " 
 
 "Murder. So you said at the inquest." 
 
 "It's true." 
 
 "Of course. Weren't you on your oath? 
 It was very zealous of you to get up so early 
 to tell me. In which hand did you have this 
 cramp?" 
 
 "Why, in the right, of course." 
 
 "And 3^ou couldn't write with your left?" 
 
 "I don't think I could even hold a pen." 
 
 "Or any other instrument, mayhap. 
 What had you been doing to bring it on?" 
 
 "Writing too much. That is the only pos- 
 sible cause." 
 
 "Oh, I don't know. Writing what?" 
 
 Denzil hesitated. "An epic poem." 
 
 "No wonder you're in debt. Will a sover- 
 eign get you out of it?" 
 
 "No ; it wouldn't be the least use to me." 
 
 "Here it is, then." 
 
 Denzil took the coin and his hat. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 89 
 
 "Aren't you going to earn it, you beggar? 
 Sit down and write something for me." 
 
 Denzil got pen and paper, and took his 
 place. 
 
 "What do you want me to' write?" 
 
 "The Epic Poem." 
 
 Denzil started and flushed. But he set to 
 work. Grodman leaned back in his arm- 
 chair and laughed, studying the poet's grave 
 face. 
 
 Denzil wrote three lines and paused, 
 
 "Can't remember any more? Well, read 
 me the start." 
 
 Denzil read : 
 
 "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world—" 
 
 "Hold on!" cried Grodman; "what morbid 
 subjects you choose, to be sure." 
 
 "Morbid! Why, Milton chose the same 
 subject!" 
 
 "Blow Milton. Take yourself off— you 
 and your Epics." 
 
 Denzil went. The pock-marked person 
 opened the street door for him. 
 
90 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "When am I to have that new dress, 
 dear?" she whispered coqiiettishly. 
 
 "I have no money, Jane/' he said shortly. 
 
 "You have a sovereign.'' 
 
 Denzil gave her the sovereign, and 
 slammed the door viciously. Grodman over- 
 heard their whispers, and laughed silently. 
 His hearing was acute. Jane had first in- 
 troduced Denzil to his acquaintance about 
 two years ago, w^hen he spoke of getting an 
 amanuensis, and the poet had been doing 
 odd jobs for him ever since. Grodman 
 argued that Jane had her reasons. With- 
 out knowing them he got a hold over both. 
 There was no one, he felt, he could 
 not get a hold over. All men — and women 
 — have something to conceal, and you have 
 only to pretend to know what it is. Thus 
 Grodman, w^ho was nothing if not scientific. 
 
 Denzil Cantercot shambled home 
 thoughtfully, and abstractedly took his 
 place at the Growl dinner-table. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 91 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Mrs. Crowl surveyed Denzil Cantercot 
 so stouily and cut him his beef so savagely 
 that he said grace when the dinner was 
 over. Peter fed his metaphysical genius on 
 tomatoes. He was tolerant enough to allow 
 his family to follow their Fads; but no 
 savory smells ever tempted him to be false 
 to his vegetable loves. Besides, meat might 
 have reminded him too much of his work. 
 There is nothing like leather, but Bow beef- 
 steaks occasionally come very near it. 
 
 After dinner Denzil usually indulged in 
 poetic reverie. But to-day he did not take 
 his nap. He went out at once to "raise the 
 wind." But there was a dead calm every- 
 w^here. In vain he asked for an advance 
 at the office of the "Mile End Mirror," to 
 which he contributed scathing leaderettes 
 about vestrymen. In vain he trudged to 
 the city and offered to write the "Ham and 
 
92 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Eggs Gazette" an essay on the modern 
 methods of bacon-curing. Denzil knew a 
 great deal about the breeding and slaugh- 
 tering of pigs, smoke-lofts and drying pro- 
 cesses, having for years dictated the policy 
 of the "New Pork Herald" in these momen- 
 tous matters. Denzil also knew a great deal 
 about many other esoteric matters, includ- 
 ing weaving machines, the manufacture of 
 cabbage leaves and snuff, and the inner 
 economy of drain-pipes. He had written 
 for the trade papers since boyhood. But 
 there is great competition on these papers. 
 So many men of literary gifts know all 
 about the intricate technicalities of manu- 
 factures and markets, and are eager to set 
 the trade right. Grodman perhaps hardly 
 allowed sufficiently for the step backward 
 that Denzil made when he devoted his whole 
 time for months to "Criminals I Have 
 Caught." It was as damaging as a de- 
 bauch. For when your rivals are pushing 
 forward, to stand still is to go back. 
 
 In despair Denzil shambled toilsomely to 
 Bethnal Green. He paused before the win- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 93 
 
 dow of a little tobacconist's shop, wherein 
 was displayed a placard announcing 
 
 "PLOTS FOR SALE." 
 
 The announcement went on to state that 
 a large stock of plots was to be obtained on 
 the premises — embracing sensational 
 plots, humorous plots, love plots, religious 
 plots, and poetic plots; also complete man- 
 uscripts, original novels, poems and tales. 
 Apply within. 
 
 It was a very dirty-looking shop, with be- 
 grimed bricks and blackened woodwork. 
 The window contained some musty old 
 books, an assortment of pipes and tobacco, 
 and a large. number of the vilest daubs un- 
 hung, painted in oil on Academy boards, 
 and unframed. These were intended for 
 landscapes, as you could tell from the titles. 
 The most expensive was "Chingford 
 Church," and it w^as marked Is. 9d. The 
 others ran from Gd. to Is. 3d., and were most- 
 ly representations of Scotch scenery — a loch 
 with mountains in the background, with 
 solid reflections in the water and a tree in 
 
94 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the foreground. Sometimes the tree would 
 be in the background. Then the loch would 
 be in the foreground. Sky and water were 
 intensely blue in all. The name of the col- 
 lection was '^Original oil paintings done by 
 hand." Dust lay thick upon everything, 
 as if carefully shoveled on; and the pro- 
 prietor looked as if he slept in his shop win- 
 dow at night without taking his clothes off. 
 He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long 
 but scanty black locks covered by a smok- 
 ing cap, and a luxuriant black mustache. 
 He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the 
 air of a broken-down operatic villain. 
 
 "Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Oantercot," he 
 said, rubbing his hands, half from cold, half 
 from usage; "what have you brought me?" 
 
 "Nothing," said Denzil, "but if you will 
 lend me a sovereign ITl do you a stunner." 
 
 The operatic villain shook his locks, his 
 eyes full of ]3awky cunning. "If you did it 
 after that it would be a stunner." 
 
 What the operatic villain did with these 
 plots, and who bought them, Cantercot 
 never knew nor cared to know. Brains are 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 95 
 
 cheap to-day, and Denzil was glad enough 
 to find a customer. 
 
 "Surely you've known me long enough to 
 trust me," he cried. 
 
 "Trust is dead," said the operatic villain, 
 puffing away. 
 
 "So is Queen Anne," cried the irritated 
 poet. His eyes took a dangerous hunted 
 look, ^oney he must have. But the oper- 
 atic villain was inflexible. No plot, no sup- 
 per. 
 
 Poor Denzil went out flaming. He knew 
 not where to turn. Temporarily he turned 
 on his heel again and stared despairingly 
 at the shop window. Again he read the 
 legend: 
 
 "PLOTS FOR SALE." 
 
 He stared so long at this that it lost its 
 meaning. When the sense of the words sud- 
 denly flashed upon him again, they bore a 
 new significance. He went in meekly, and 
 borrowed fourpence of the operatic villain. 
 Then he took the 'bus for Scotland Yard. 
 There was a not ill-looking servant girl in 
 the 'bus. The rhythm of the vehicle shaped 
 
96 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 itself into rhymes in his brain. He forgot 
 all about his situation and his object. He 
 had never really written an epic — except 
 "Paradise Lost" — but he composed lyrics 
 about wine and women and often wept to 
 think how miserable he was. But nobody 
 ever bought anything of him, except articles 
 on bacon-curing or attacks on vestrymen. 
 He was a strange, wild creature, and the 
 wench felt quite pretty under his ardent 
 gaze. It almost hypnotized her, though, 
 and she looked down at her new French kid 
 boots to escape it. 
 
 At Scotland Yard Denzil asked for 
 Edward Wimp. Edward Wimp was not on; 
 view. Like kings and editors. Detectives 
 are difficult of approach — unless you are 
 a criminal, when you cannot see anything 
 of them at all. Denzil knew of Edward 
 Wimp, principally because of Grodman's 
 contempt for his successor. Wimp was a 
 man of taste and culture. Grodman's in- 
 terests were entirely concentrated on the 
 problems of logic and evidence. Books 
 about these formed his sole reading; for 
 belles lettres he cared not a straw. Wimp, 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 97 
 
 with his flexible intellect, had a great 
 contempt for Grodman and his slow, labori- 
 ous, ponderous, almost Teutonic methods. 
 Worse, he almost threatened to eclipse the 
 radiant tradition of Grodman by some won- 
 derfully ingenious bits of workmanship. 
 Wimp was at his greatest in collecting cir- 
 cumstantial evidence; in putting two and 
 two together to make five. He would col- 
 lect together a number of dark and discon- 
 nected data and flash across them the elec- 
 tric light of some unifying hypothesis in a 
 way which would have done credit to a Dar- 
 win or a Faraday. An intellect which 
 might have served to unveil the secret work- 
 ings of nature was subverted to the protec- 
 tion of a capitalistic civilization. 
 
 By the assistance of a friendly policeman, 
 whom the poet magnetized into the belief 
 that his business was a matter of life and 
 death, Denzil obtained the great detective's 
 private address. It was near King's Cross. 
 By a miracle Wimp was at hom^ in the aft- 
 ernoon. He was writing when Denzil was 
 ushered up three pairs of stairs into his 
 
98 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 presence, but he got up and flashed the 
 bulPs-eje of his glance upon the visitor. 
 
 "Mr. Denzil Cantercot, I believe!" said 
 Wimp. 
 
 Denzil started. He had not sent up his 
 name, merely describing himself as a gen- 
 tleman. 
 
 "That is my name," he murmured. 
 
 "You were one of the witnesses at the in- 
 quest on the body of the late Arthur Con- 
 stant. I have your evidence there." He 
 pointed to a file. "Why have you come to 
 give fresh evidence?" 
 
 Again Denzil started, flushing in addi- 
 tion this time. "I want money," he said, 
 almost involuntarily. 
 
 "Sit down." Denzil sat. Wimp stood. 
 
 Wimp was young and fresh-colored. He 
 had a Roman nose, and was smartly 
 dressed. He had beaten Grodman by dis- 
 covering the wife Heaven meant for him. 
 He had a bouncing boy, who stole jam out 
 of the pantry without anyone being the 
 wiser. Wimp did what work he could do 
 at home in a secluded study at the top of 
 the house. Outside his chamber of horrors 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 99 
 
 he was the ordinary husband of com- 
 merce. He adored his wife, who thought 
 poorly of his intellect, but highly of his 
 heart. In domestic difficulties Wimp 
 was helpless. He could not even tell 
 whether the servant's "character" was 
 forged or genuine. Probably he could not 
 level himself to such petty problems. He 
 was like the senior wrangler who has for- 
 gotten how to do quadratics, and has to 
 solve equations of the second degree by the 
 calculus. 
 
 "How much money do you want?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "I do not make bargains," Denzil replied, 
 his calm come back by this time. "I came 
 to tender you a suggestion. It struck me 
 that you might offer me a fiver for my trou- 
 ble. Should you do so, I shall not refuse 
 it." 
 
 "You shall not refuse it — if you deserve 
 it." 
 
 "Good. I will come to the point at once. 
 My suggestion concerns — Tom Mortlake." 
 
 Denzil threw out the name as if it were 
 a torpedo. Wimp did not move. 
 
100 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "Tom Mortlake," went on Denzil, looking 
 disappointed^ "had a sweetheart." lie 
 paused impressively. 
 
 Wimp said "Yes?" 
 
 "Where is that sweetheart now?" 
 
 "Where, indeed?" 
 
 "You know about her disappearance?" 
 
 "You have just informed me of it." 
 
 "Yes, she is gone — without a trace. She 
 went about a fortnight before Mr. Con- 
 stant's murder." 
 
 "Murder? How do you know it was a 
 murder?" 
 
 "Mr. Grodman says so," said Denzil, 
 startled again. 
 
 "H'm! Isn't that rather a proof that it 
 was suicide? Well, go on." 
 
 "About a fortnight before the suicide, 
 Jessie Dymond disappeared. So they tell 
 me in Stepney Green, where she lodged and 
 worked." 
 
 "What was she?" 
 
 "She was a dressmaker. She had a won- 
 derful talent. Quite fashionable ladies got 
 to know of it. One of her dresses was pre- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTETC ;' . \ ', , , J idl \. 
 
 sen ted at Court. I think the lady forgot to 
 pay for it; so Jessie's landlady said." 
 
 "Did she live alone?" 
 
 ^'^She had no parents, but the house was 
 respectable." 
 
 "Good-looking, I suppose?" 
 
 "As a poet's dream." 
 
 "As yours, for instance?" 
 
 "I am a poet; I dream." 
 
 "You dream you are a poet. Well, well! 
 She was engaged to Mortlake?" 
 
 "Oh, yes ! They made no secret of it. The 
 engagement was an old one. When he 
 was earning 36s. a week as a compositor 
 they were saving up to buy a home. He 
 worked at Eailton and Hockes', who print 
 the ^I^ew Pork Herald.' I used to take my 
 'copy' into the comps' room, and one day 
 the Father of the Chapel told me all about 
 'Mortlake and his young woman.' Ye gods ! 
 How times are changed! Two years ago 
 Mortlake had to struggle with my cali- 
 graphy — now he is in with all the nobs, and 
 goes to the 'at homes' of the aristocracy." 
 
 "Radical M. P.'s," murmured Wimp, smil- 
 ing. 
 
101:: ,, T^HE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "While I am still barred from the claz» 
 zling drawing-rooms, where beauty and in- 
 tellect foregather. A mere artisan! A 
 manual laborer!" DenziPs eyes flashed an- 
 grily. He rose with excitement. "They 
 say he always was a jabberer in the com- 
 posing-room, and he has jabbered himself 
 right out of it and into a pretty good thing. 
 He didn't have much to say about the 
 crimes of capital when he was set up to 
 second the toast of ^Kailton and Hockes' 
 at the beanfeast." 
 
 "Toast and butter, toast and butter," said 
 Wimp genially. "I shouldn't blame a man 
 for serving the two together, Mr. Canter- 
 cot." 
 
 Denzil forced a laugh. "Yes; but consis- 
 tency's my motto. I like to see the royal soul 
 immaculate, unchanging, immovable by for- 
 tune. Anyhow, when better times came 
 for Mortlake the engagement still dragged 
 on. He did not visit her so much. This 
 last autumn he saw very little of her." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "I — I was often in Stepney Green. My 
 business took me past the house of an even- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 103 
 
 ing. Sometimes there was no light in her 
 room. That meant she was downstairs gos- 
 siping with the landhidy." 
 
 "She might have been out with Tom?'^ 
 
 "No, sir; I knew Tom was on the plat- 
 form somewhere or other. He was work- 
 ing up to all hours organizing the eight 
 hours working movement." 
 
 "A very good reason for relaxing his 
 sweethearting." 
 
 "It was. He never went to Stepney 
 Green on a week night." 
 
 "But you always did." 
 
 ^^o — not every night." 
 
 "You didn't go in?" 
 
 "Never. She wouldn't permit my visits. 
 She was a girl of strong character. She al- 
 ways reminded me of Flora Macdonald." 
 
 "Another lady of your acquaintance?" 
 
 "A lady I know better than the shadows 
 who surround me; who is more real to me 
 than the women who pester me for the price 
 for apartments. Jessie Dymond, too, was of 
 the race of heroines. Her eyes were clear 
 blue, two wells with Truth at the bottom 
 of each When I looked into those eyes my 
 
104 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 own were dazzled. They were the only 
 eyes I coiikl never make dreamy.'' He 
 waved his hand as if making a pass with it. 
 ^It was she who had the influence over me." 
 
 ^^You knew her then?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. I knew Tom from the old ^IS'ew 
 Pork Herald' days, and when I first met him 
 with Jessie hanging on his arm he was quite 
 proud to introduce her to a poet. When 
 he got on he tried to shake me off." 
 
 "You should have repaid him what you 
 borrowed." 
 
 "It— it— was only a trifle," stammered 
 Denzil. 
 
 "Yes, but the world turns on trifles," said 
 the wise Wimp. 
 
 "The world is itself a trifle," said the pen- 
 sive poet. "The Beautiful alone is deserv- 
 ing of our regard." 
 
 "And when the Beautiful was not gossip- 
 ing with her landlady, did she gossip with 
 you as you passed the door?" 
 
 "Alas, no! She sat in her room reading, 
 and cast a shadow — ^" 
 
 "On your life?" 
 
 "No; on the blind." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 105 
 
 "Always one shadow?" 
 
 "No, sir. Once or twice, two." 
 
 "Ah, you had been drinking." 
 
 "On my life, not. I have sworn off the 
 treacherous wine-cup." 
 
 "That's right. Beer is bad for poets. It 
 makes their feet shaky. Whose was the 
 second shadow?" 
 
 "A man's." 
 
 "Naturally. Mortlake's, perhaps?" 
 
 "Impossible. He was still striking eight 
 hours." 
 
 "You found out whose? You didn't leave 
 it a shadow of doubt?" 
 
 "No; I waited till the substance came 
 out." 
 
 "It was Arthur Constant." 
 
 "You are a magician! You — you terrify 
 me. Yes, it was he." 
 
 "Only once or twice, you say?" 
 
 "I didn't keep watch over them." 
 
 "No, no, of course not. You only passed 
 casually. I understand you thoroughly." 
 
 Denzil did not feel comfortable at the as- 
 sertion. 
 
 "What did he go there for?" Wimp went 
 on. 
 
106 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "I don't know. I'd stake my soui on Jes- 
 sie's honor.'- 
 
 "You might double your stake without 
 
 risk." 
 
 "Yes, I might! I would! You see her 
 with my eyes." 
 
 "For the moment they are the only ones 
 available. When was the last time you 
 saw the two together?" 
 
 "About the middle of November." 
 
 "Mortlake knew nothing of their meet- 
 ings?" 
 
 "I don't know. Perhaps he did. Mr. Con- 
 stant had probably enlisted her in his social 
 mission work. I knew she was one of the 
 attendants at the big children's tea in the 
 Great Assembly Hall early in November. 
 He treated her quite like a lady. She was 
 the only attendant who worked with her 
 hands." 
 
 "The others carried the cups on their feet, 
 I suppose?" 
 
 "No; how could that be? My meaning 
 is that all the other attendants were real 
 ladies, and Jessie was only an amateur, so 
 to speak. There was no novelty for her in 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 107 
 
 handing kids cups of tea. I daresay she 
 had helped her landlady often enough at 
 that — there's quite a bushel of brats below 
 stairs. It's almost as bad as at friend 
 CrowFs. Jessie was a real brick. But per- 
 haps Tom didn't know her value. Perhaps 
 he didn't like Constant to call on her, and 
 it led to a quarrel. Anyhow, she's disap- 
 peared, like the snowfall on the river. 
 There's not a trace. The landlady, who was 
 such a friend of hers that Jessie used to 
 make up her stuff into dresses for nothing, 
 tells me that she's dreadfully annoyed at 
 not having been left the slightest clue to 
 her late tenant's whereabouts." 
 
 "You have been making inquiries on your 
 own account apparently." 
 
 "Only of the landlady. Jessie never even 
 gave her the week's notice, but paid her in 
 lieu of it, and left immediately. The land- 
 lady told me I could have knocked her down 
 with a feather. Unfortunately, I wasn't 
 there to do it, for I should certainly have 
 knocked her down for not keeping her eyes 
 open better. She says if she had only had 
 the least suspicion beforehand that the 
 
108 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was 
 going, she'd have known where, or her name 
 would have been somebody else's. And 
 yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill 
 and worried. Stupid old hag!" 
 
 ^*A woman of character," murmured the 
 detective. 
 
 "Didn't I tell you so?" cried Denzil eager- 
 ly. "Another girl would have let out that 
 she was going. But, no! not a word. She 
 I)lumped down the money and walked out. 
 The landlady ran upstairs. None of Jes- 
 sie's things were there. She must have 
 quietly sold them off, or transferred them 
 to the new place. I never in my life met a 
 girl who so thoroughly knew her own mind 
 or had a mind so worth knowing. She al- 
 ways reminded me of the Maid of Sara- 
 gossa." 
 
 "Indeed! And when did she leave?" 
 ' "On the 19th of November." 
 
 "Mortlake of course knows where she is?" 
 
 "I can't say. Last time I was at the house 
 to inquire — it was at the end of November 
 — he hadn't been seen there for six weeks. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 109 
 
 He wrote to her, of course, sometimes — the 
 landlady knew his writing." 
 
 Wimp looked Denzil straight in the eye^, 
 and said, "You mean, of course, to accuse 
 Mortlake of the murder of Mr. Constant?" 
 
 "N-n-no, not at all," stammered Denzil, 
 "only you know what Mr. Grodman wrote 
 to the Tell MelL' The more we know about 
 Mr. Constant's life the more we shall know 
 about the manner of his death. I thought 
 my information would be valuable to you, 
 and I brought it." 
 
 "And why didn't you take it to Mr. Grod- 
 man?" 
 
 "Because I thought it wouldn't be valu- 
 able to me." 
 
 "You wrote ^Criminals I Have Caught.' " 
 
 "How — how do you know that?" Wimp 
 was startling him to-day with a vengeance. 
 
 "Your style, my dear Mr. Cantercot. The 
 unique noble style." 
 
 "Yes, I was afraid it would betray me," 
 said Denzil. "And since you know, I may 
 tell you that Grodman's a mean curmudg- 
 eon. What does he want with all that 
 money and those houses — a man with no 
 
110 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 sense of the Beautifut? He'd have taken 
 my information, and given me more kicks 
 than ha^pence for it, so to speak." 
 
 "Yes, he is a shrewd man after all. I 
 don't see anything valuable in your evi- 
 dence against Mortlake," 
 
 "No !" said Denzil in a disappointed tone, 
 and fearing he was going to be robbed. 
 "Not when Mor-tlake was already jealous of 
 Mr. Constant, who was a sort of rival organ- 
 izer, unpaid! A kind of blackleg doing the 
 work cheaper — nay, for nothing." 
 
 "Did Mortlake tell you he was Jealous?" 
 said Wimp, a shade of sarcastic contempt 
 piercing through his tones. 
 
 "Oh, yes! He said to me, ^That man will 
 work mischief. I don't like your kid-glove 
 philanthropists middling in matters they 
 don't understand.' " 
 
 "Those were his very words?" 
 
 "His ipsissimxi verbal 
 
 "Very well. I have your address in my 
 files. Here is a sovereign for you." 
 
 "Only one sovereign! It's not the least 
 use to me." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. Ill 
 
 "Very well. It's of great use to me. I 
 ha<re a wife to keep." 
 
 "I havenV said Denzil with a sickly 
 smile, "so perhaps I can manage on it after 
 all." He took his hat and the sovereign. 
 
 Outside the door he met a rather pretty 
 servant just bringing in some tea to her 
 master. He nearly upset her tray at sight 
 of her. She seemed more amused at the 
 rencontre than he. 
 
 "Good afternoon, dear," she said coquet- 
 tishly. "You might let me have that sov- 
 ereign. I do so want a new Sunday bon- 
 net." 
 
 Denzil gave her the sovereign, and 
 slammed the hall door viciously when 
 he got to the bottom of the stairs. He 
 seemed to be walking arm-in-arm with 
 the long arm of coincidence. Wimp did 
 not. hear the duologue. He was already 
 busy on his evening's report to headquar- 
 ters. The next day Denzil had a body-guard 
 wherever he went. It might have gratified 
 his vanity had he known it. But to-night he 
 was yet unattended, so no one noted that he 
 went to 46 Glover Street, after the early 
 
112 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Crowl supper. He could not help going. 
 He wanted to get another sovereign. He 
 also itched to taunt Grodman. Not suc- 
 ceeding in the former object, he felt the 
 road open for the second. 
 
 "Do jou still hope to discover the Bow 
 murderer?" he asked the old bloodhound. 
 
 "I can lay my hand on him now/' Grod- 
 man announced curtly. 
 
 Denzil hitched his chair back involun- 
 tarily. He found conversation with detec- 
 tives as lively as playing at skittles with 
 bombshells. They got on his nerves ter- 
 ribly, these undemonstrative gentlemen 
 with no sense of the Beautiful. 
 
 "But why don't you give him up to jus- 
 tice?" he murmured. 
 
 "Ah — it has to be proved yet. But it is 
 only a matter of time." 
 
 "Oh!" said Denzil, "and shall I write the 
 story for you?" 
 
 "No. You will not live long enough." 
 
 Denzil turned white. "Nonsense! I am 
 years younger than you," he gasped. 
 
 "Yes," said Grodman, "but you drink so 
 much." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 113 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 When Wimp invited Grodman to eat his 
 Christmas plnm-pudding at King's Cross 
 Grodman was only a little surprised. The 
 two men were always overwhelmingly cor- 
 dial when they met, in order to disguise 
 their mutual detestation. When people 
 really like each other, they make no con- 
 cealment of their mutual contempt. In his 
 letter to Grodman, Wimp said that he 
 thought it would be nicer for him to keep 
 Christmas in company than in solitary 
 state. There seems to be a general preju- 
 dice in favor of Christmas numbers, and 
 Grodman yielded to it. Besides, he thought 
 that a peep at the Wimp domestic interior 
 would be as good as a pantomime. He quite 
 enjoyed the fun that was coming, for he 
 knew that Wimp had not invited him out 
 of mere "peace and goodwill." 
 
 There was only one other guest at the 
 
114 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 festive board. This was Wimp^s wife's 
 mother's mother, a lady of sweet seventy. 
 Only a minority of mankind can obtain a 
 grandmother-in-law by marrying, but 
 Wimp was not unduly conceited. The old 
 lady suffered from delusions. One of them 
 was that she was a centenarian. She 
 dressed for the part. It is extraordinary 
 what pains ladies will take to conceal their 
 age. Another of Wimp's grandmother-in- 
 law's delusions was that Wimp had mar- 
 ried to get her into the family. Not to frus- 
 trate his design, she always gave him her 
 company on high-days and holidays. Wil- 
 fred Wimp — the little boy who stole the 
 jam — was in great form at the Christmas 
 dinner. The only drawback to his enjoy- 
 ment was that its sweets needed no steal- 
 ing. His mother presided over the plat- 
 ters, and thought how much cleverer Grod- 
 man was than her husband. When the 
 pretty servant who waited on them was 
 momentarily out of the room, Grodman had 
 remarked that she seemed very inquisitive. 
 This coincided with Mrs. Wimp's own con- 
 victions, though Mr. Wimp could never be 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 115 
 
 brought to see aDything unsatisfactory or 
 suspicious about the girl, not even though 
 there were faults in spelling in the "charac- 
 ter" with which her last mistress had sup- 
 plied her. 
 
 It was true that the puss had pricked up 
 her ears when Denzil Oantercof s name was 
 mentioned. Grodman saw it and watched 
 her, and fooled Wimp to the top of his bent. 
 It was, of course, Wimp who introduced the 
 poet's name, and he did it so casually that 
 drodman perceived at once that he wished 
 to pump him. The idea that the rival blood- 
 hound should come to him for confirmation 
 of suspicions against his own pet jackal was 
 too funny. It was almost as funny to Grod- 
 man that evidence of some sort should be 
 obviously lying to hand in the bosom of 
 Wimp's hand-maiden; so obviously that 
 Wimp could not see it. Grodman enjoyed 
 his Christmas dinner, secure that he had 
 not found a successor after all. Wimp, for 
 his part, contemptuously wondered at the 
 way Grodman's thought hovered about 
 Denzil without grazing the truth. A mnT? 
 constantly about him, too! 
 
116 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "Denzil is a man of genius," said Grod- 
 man. "And as such comes under the head- 
 ing of Suspicious Characters. He has writ- 
 ten an Epic Poem and read it to me. It is 
 morbid from start to finish. There is ^death' 
 in the third line. I daresay you know he 
 polished up my book." Grodman's artless- 
 ness was perfect. 
 
 "No. You surprise me," Wimp replied. 
 "I'm sure he couldn't have done much to it. 
 Look at your letter in the Tell Mell.' Who 
 wants more polish and refinement than that 
 showed?" 
 
 "Ah, I didn't know you did me the honor 
 of reading that." 
 
 "Oh, yes; we both read it," put in Mrs. 
 Wimp. "I told Mr. Wimp it was clever and 
 cogent. After that quotation from the let- 
 ter to the poor fellow's fiancee there could 
 be no more doubt but that it was murder. 
 Mr. Wimp was convinced by it, too, weren't 
 you, Edward?" 
 
 Edward coughed uneasily. It was a true 
 statement, and therefore an indiscreet. 
 Grodman would plume himself terribly. 
 At this moment Wimp felt that Grodman 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 117 
 
 had been right in remaining a bachelor. 
 Grodman perceived the humor of the situa- 
 tion, and wore a curious, sub-mocking smile. 
 
 ^^On the day I was born," said Wimp's 
 grandmother-in-law, "over a hundred years 
 ago, there was a babe murdered." Wimp 
 found himself wishing it had been she. He 
 was anxious to get back to Cantercot 
 *^Don't let us talk shop on Christmas Day," 
 he said, smiling at Grodman. "Besides, 
 murder isn't a very appropriate subject." 
 
 "No, it ain't," said Grodman. "How did 
 we get on to it? Oh, yes — Denzil Cantercot. 
 Ha! ha! ha! That's curious, for since Denzil 
 wrote ^Criminals I have Caught,' his mind's 
 running on nothing but murders. A poet's 
 brain is easily turned." 
 
 Wimp's eye glittered with excitement 
 and contempt for Grodman's blindness. In 
 Grodman's eye there danced an amused 
 scorn of Wimp; to the outsider his amuse- 
 ment appeared at the expense of the poet. 
 
 Having wrought his rival up to the high- 
 est pitch Grodman slyly and suddenly un- 
 strung him. 
 
 "How lucky for Denzil!" he said, still In 
 
118 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the same naive, facetious Cliristmasy tone, 
 "that he can prove an alibi in this Constant 
 affair." 
 
 "An alibi!" gasped Wimp. "Really?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. He was with his wife, you 
 know. She's my woman of all work, Jane. 
 She happened to mention his being with 
 her." 
 
 Jane had done nothing of the kind. Aft- 
 er the colloquy he had overheard Grodman 
 had set himself to find out the relation be- 
 tween his two employes. By casually re- 
 ferring to Denzil as "your husband" he so 
 startled the poor woman that she did not 
 attempt to deny the bond. Only once did 
 he use the two words, but he was satisfied. 
 As to the alibi he had not yet troubled her j 
 but to take its existence for granted would 
 upset and discomfort Wimp. For the mo- 
 ment that was triumph enough for Wimp's 
 guest. 
 
 "Par," said Wilfred Wimp, "what's a 
 alley bi? A marble?" 
 
 "No, my lad," said Grodman, "it means 
 being somewhere else when you're supposed 
 to be somewhere." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 119 
 
 "All, playiug truant/' said Wilfred self- 
 consciously; liis schoolmaster had often 
 proved an alibi against him. "Then Denzil 
 will be hanged." 
 
 Was it a prophecy? Wimp accepted it 
 as such; as an oracle from the gods bid- 
 ding him mistrust Grodman. Out of the 
 mouths of little children issueth wisdom; 
 sometimes even when they are not saying 
 their lessons. 
 
 "When I was in my cradle, a century 
 ago," said Wimp's grandmother-in-law, 
 "men were hanged for stealing horses." 
 
 They silenced her with snapdragon per- 
 formances. 
 
 Wimp was busy thinking how to get at 
 Grodman's factotum. 
 
 Grodman was busy thinking how to get 
 at Wimp's domestic. 
 
 Neither received any of the usual mes- 
 sages from the Christmas Bells. 
 
 * * * » 
 
 The next day was sloppy and uncertain. 
 A thin rain drizzled languidly. One can 
 stand that sort of thing on a summer Bank 
 Holiday; one expects it. But to have a bad 
 
120 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 December Bank Holiday is too much of a 
 bad thing. Some steps should surely be 
 taken to confuse the weather clerk's chro- 
 nology. Once let him know that Bank Holi- 
 day is coming, and he writes to the com- 
 pany for more water. To-day his stock 
 seemed low and he was dribbling it out; at 
 times the wintry sun would shine in a 
 feeble, diluted way, and though the holiday- 
 makers would have preferred to take their 
 sunshine neat, they swarmed forth in their 
 myriads whenever there was a ray of hope. 
 But it was only dodging the raindrops; up 
 went the umbrellas again, and the streets 
 became meadows of ambulating mush- 
 rooms. 
 
 Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat 
 at the open window, looking at the land- 
 scape in water colors. He smoked an after- 
 dinner cigarette, and spoke of the Beauti- 
 ful. Crowl was with him. They were in 
 the first floor front, CrowPs bedroom, which, 
 from its view of the Mile End Koad, was 
 livelier than the parlor with its outlook on 
 the backyard. Mrs. Crowl was an anti- 
 tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 121 
 
 but Peter did not like to put tlie poet or his 
 cigarette out. He felt there was something 
 in common between smoke and poetry, over 
 and above their being both Fads. Besides, 
 Mrs. Crow^l was sulking in the kitchen. 
 She had been arranging for an excursion 
 with Peter and the children to Victoria 
 Park. She had dreamed of the Crystal 
 Palace, but Santa Clans had put no gifts in 
 the cobbler's shoes. Now she could not risk 
 spoiling the feather in her bonnet. The 
 nine brats expressed their disappointment 
 by slapping one another on the staircases. 
 Peter felt that Mrs. Crowl connected him 
 in some way with the rainfall, and was un- 
 happy. Was it not enough that he had 
 been deprived of the pleasure of pointing 
 out to a superstitious majority the mutual 
 contradictions of Leviticus and the Song of 
 Solomon? It was not often that Crowl 
 could count on such an audience. 
 
 "And you still call Nature beautiful?" he 
 said to Denzil, pointing to the ragged sky 
 and the dripping eaves. "Ugly old scare- 
 crow!" 
 
 "Ugly she seems to-day," admitted Den- 
 
122 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 zil. "But what is Ugliness but a higher 
 form of Beauty? You have to look deeper 
 into it to see it; such vision is the price- 
 less gift of the few. To me this wan deso- 
 lation of sighing rain is lovely as the sea- 
 washed ruins of cities." 
 
 "Ah, but you wouldn't like to go out in 
 it," said Peter Crowl. As he spoke the driz- 
 zle suddenly thickened into a torrent. 
 
 "We do not always kiss the woman we 
 love." 
 
 "Speak for yourself, Denzil. I'm only a 
 plain man, and I want to know if Nature 
 isn't a Fad. Hallo, there goes Mortlake! 
 Lord, a minute of this will soak him to the 
 skin." 
 
 The labor leader was walking along with 
 bowed head. He did not seem to mind the 
 shower. It was some seconds before he 
 even heard Growl's invitation to him to take 
 shelter. When he did hear it he shook his 
 head. 
 
 "I know I can't offer you a drawing-room 
 with duchesses stuck about it," said Peter, 
 vexed. 
 
 Tom turned the handle of the shop door 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 123 
 
 and went in. There was nothing in the 
 world which now galled him more than tlie 
 suspicion that he was stuck-up and wished 
 to cut old friends. He picked his way 
 through the nine brats who clung affection- 
 ately to his wet knees, dispersing them final- 
 ly by a jet of coppers to scramble for. Peter 
 met him on the stair and shook his hand 
 lovingly and admiringly, and took him into 
 Mrs. Growl's bedroom. 
 
 "Don't mind what I say, Tom. Pm only 
 a plain man, and my tongue will say what 
 comes uppermost! But it ain't from the 
 soul, Tom, it ain't from the soul," said Peter, 
 punning feebly, and letting a mirthless 
 smile play over his sallow features. "You 
 know Mr. Canter cot, I suppose? The poet." 
 
 "Oh, yes; how do you do, Tom? Seen the 
 'New Pork Herald' lately? Not bad, those 
 old times, eh?" 
 
 "No," said Tom, "I wish I was back in 
 them." 
 
 "Nonsense, nonsense," said Peter, in 
 much concern. "Look at the good you are 
 doing to the working man. Look how you 
 
124 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 are sweeping away the Fads. Ah, it's a 
 grand thing to be gifted, Tom. The idea of 
 your chuckin' yourself away on a composin' 
 room! Manual labor is all very well for 
 plain men like me, with no gift but just 
 enough brains to see into the realties of 
 things — to understand that we've got no 
 soul and no immortality, and ail that — antl 
 too selfish to look after anybody's comfort 
 but my own and mother's and the kid's. 
 But men like you and Cantercot — it ain't 
 right that you should be peggin' away at 
 low material things. Not that I think Can- 
 tercot's gospel's any value to the masses. 
 The Beautiful is all very well for folks 
 who've got nothing else to think of, but give 
 me the True. You're the man for my 
 money, Mortlake. No reference to the 
 funds, Tom, to which I contribute little 
 enough, Heaven knows; though how a place 
 can know anything, Heaven alone knows. 
 You give us the Useful, Tom; that's what 
 the world wants more than the Beautiful." 
 "Socrates said that the Useful is the 
 Beautiful," said Denzil. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. . 125 
 
 "That ma}^ be/' said Peter, "but the Beau- 
 tiful ain't the Useful." 
 
 "Nonsense!" said Denzil. "What about 
 Jessie — I mean Miss Dymond? There's a 
 combination for you. She always reminds 
 me of Grace Darling. How is she, Tom?" 
 
 "She's dead!" snapped Tom. 
 
 "What?" Denzil turned as white as a 
 Christmas ghost. 
 
 "It was in the papers," said Tom; "all 
 about her and the lifeboat." 
 
 "Oh, you mean Grace Darling," said Den- 
 zil, visibly relieved. "I meant Miss Dy- 
 mond." 
 
 "You needn't be so interested in her," 
 said Tom, surlily. "She don't appreciate it. 
 Ah, the shower is over. I must be going." 
 
 "No, stay a little longer, Tom," pleaded 
 Peter. "I see a lot about you in the papers, 
 but very little of your dear old phiz now. I 
 can't spare the time to go and hear you. 
 But I really must give myself a treat. 
 When's your next show?" 
 
 "Oh, I am always giving shows," said 
 Tom, smiling a little. "But my next big 
 performance is on the tv/enty-lirst of Jan- 
 
126 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 uarj, when that picture of poor Mr. Con- 
 stant is to be unveiled at the Bow Break 
 o' Day Club. They have written to Glad- 
 stone and other big pots to come down. I 
 do hope the old. man accepts. A non-politi- 
 cal gathering like this is the only occasion 
 we could both speak at, and I have never 
 been on the same platform with Gladstone." 
 
 He forgot his depression and ill-temper 
 in the prospect, and spoke with more ani- 
 mation. 
 
 "No, I should hope not, Tom," said Peter. 
 "What with his Fads about the Bible being 
 a Kock, and Monarchy being the right 
 thing, he is a most dangerous man to lead 
 the Radicals. He never lays his ax to the 
 root of anything — except oak trees." 
 
 "Mr. Canty cot!" It was Mrs. CrowFs 
 voice that broke in upon the tirade. 
 "There's a gentleman to see you." The aston- 
 ishment Mrs. Crowl put into the "gentle- 
 man" was delightful. It was almost as 
 good as a week's rent to her to give vent to 
 her feelings. The controversial couple had 
 moved away from the window when Tom 
 entered, and had not noticed the immedi- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 127 
 
 ate advent of another visitor who had spent 
 his time profitably in listening to Mrs. 
 Crowl before asking to see the presumable 
 object of his visit. 
 
 "Ask him up if it's a friend of yours, Can- 
 tercot," said Peter. It was Wimp. Denzil 
 was rather dubious as to the friendship, but 
 he preferred to take Wimp diluted. "Mort- 
 lake's upstairs," he said. "Will you come up 
 and see him?" 
 
 Wimp had intended a duologue, but he 
 made no objection, so he, too, stumbled 
 through the nine brats to Mrs. CrowPs bed- 
 room. It was a queer quartette. Wimp 
 had hardly expected to find anybody at the 
 house on Boxing Day, but he did not care 
 to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on 
 the track? How lucky it was that Denzil 
 had made the first overtures, so that he 
 could approach him without exciting sus- 
 picion. 
 
 Mortlake scowled when he saw the de- 
 tective. He objected to the police — on prin- 
 ciple. But Crowl had no idea who the 
 visitor was, even when told his name. He 
 was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil's 
 
128 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY 
 
 high-class friends, and welcomed him 
 warmly. Probably he was some famous 
 editor, which would account for his name 
 stirring vague recollections. He sum- 
 moned the eldest brat and sent him for beer 
 (people would have their Fads), and 
 not without trepidation called dovv-n to 
 "Mother" for glasses. "Mother" observed 
 at night (in the same apartment) that the 
 beer money might have paid the week's 
 school fees for half the family. 
 
 "We were just talking of poor Mr. Con- 
 stant's portrait, Mr. Wimp," said the un- 
 conscious Crowl; "they're going to unveil 
 it, Mortlake tells me, on the twenty-first of 
 next month at the Bow Break o' Day Club." 
 
 "Ah," said Wimp, elated at being spared 
 the trouble of maneuvering the conversa- 
 tion; "mysterious affair that, Mr. Crowl." 
 
 "'No; it's the right thing," said Peter. 
 "There ought to be some memorial of the 
 man in the district where he worked and 
 where he died, poor chap." The cobbler 
 brushed away a tear. 
 
 "Yes, it's only right," echoed Mortlake 
 a whit eagerly. "He was a noble fellow, a 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 129 
 
 true philanthropist. The only thoroughly 
 unselfish worker Pve ever met." 
 
 "He was that/' said Peter; "and it's a 
 rare pattern is unselfishness. Poor fellow, 
 poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. 
 I've never met his like. Ah, I wish there 
 was a Heaven for him to go to!" He blew 
 his nose violently with a red pocket-hand- 
 kerchief. 
 
 "Well, he's there, if there i^," said Tom. 
 
 "I hope he is," added Wimp fervently; 
 "but I shouldn't like to go there the way 
 he did." 
 
 "You were the last person to see him, 
 Tom, weren't you?" said Denzil. 
 
 "Oh, no," answered Tom quickly. "You 
 remember he went out after me; at least, 
 so Mrs. Drabdump said at the inquest." 
 
 "That last conversation he had with you, 
 Tom," said Denzil. "He didn't say anything 
 to you that would lead you to suppose — " 
 
 "No, of course not!" interrupted Mort- 
 lake impatiently. 
 
 "Do you really think he was murdered, 
 Tom?" said Denzil. 
 
 "Mr. Wimp's opinion on that point is 
 
130 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 more valuable than mine," replied Tom, 
 testily. "It may have been suicide. Men 
 often get sick of life — especially if they are 
 bored," he added meaningly. 
 
 "Ah, but you were the last person known 
 to be with him," said Denzil. 
 
 Crowl laughed. "Had you there, Tom." 
 
 But they did not have Tom there much 
 longer, for he departed, looking even worse- 
 tempered than when he came. Wimp went 
 soon after, and Crowl and Denzil were left 
 to their interminable argumentation con- 
 cerning the Useful and the Beautiful. 
 
 Wimp went west. He had several strings 
 (or cords) to his bow, and he ultimately 
 found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. 
 Being there, he went down the avenues of 
 the dead to a grave to note down the ex- 
 act date of a death. It was a day on which 
 the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sod- 
 den sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet 
 spongy soil, the reeking grass — everything 
 combined to make one long to be in a warm, 
 comfortable grave, away from the leaden 
 ennui of life. Suddenly the detective's 
 keen eye caught sight of a figure that made 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 131 
 
 his heart throb with sudden excitement. 
 It was that of a woman in a gray shawl and 
 a brown bonnet standing before a railed-in 
 srave. She had no umbrella. The rain 
 plashed mournfully upon her, but left no 
 trace on her soaking garments. Wimp 
 crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to 
 him. Her eyes were lowered to the grave, 
 which seemed to be drawing them toward 
 it by some strange morbid fascination. His 
 eyes followed hers. The simple headstone 
 bore the name: "Arthur Constant." 
 
 Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump went deadly white. She 
 turned round, staring at Wimp without 
 any recognition. 
 
 "You remember me, surely," he said. 
 "Pve been down once or twice to your place 
 about that poor gentleman's papers." His 
 eye indicated the grave. 
 
 "Lor! I remember you now," said Mrs. 
 Drabdump. 
 
 "Won't you come under my umbrella? 
 You must be drenched to the skin." 
 
132 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "It don't matter, sir. I can't take no hurt. 
 I've had the rheumatics this twenty year." 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting 
 Wimp's attentions, not so much perhaps 
 because he was a man as because he was 
 a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump liked to see 
 the line folks keep their place, and not con- 
 taminate their skirts by contact with the 
 lower castes. "It's set wet, it'll rain right 
 into the new year," she announced. "And 
 they say a bad beginnin' makes a worse 
 endin'." Mrs. Drabdump was one of those 
 persons who give you the idea that they 
 just missed being born barometers. 
 
 "But what are you doing in this miser- 
 able spot, so far from home?" queried the 
 detective. 
 
 "It's Bank Holiday," Mrs. Drabdump re- 
 minded him in tones of acute surprise. "I 
 always make a hexcursion on Bank Holi- 
 day," 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 133 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The New Year brought Mrs. Drabdump 
 a new lodger. He was an old gentleman 
 with a long gray beard. He rented the 
 rooms of the late Mr. Constant, and lived 
 a very retired life. Haunted rooms — or 
 rooms that ought to be haunted if the 
 ghosts of those murdered in them had any 
 self-respect — are supposed to fetch a lower 
 rent in the market. The whole Irish prob- 
 lem might be solved if the spirits of "Mr. 
 Balfour's victims" would only depreciate 
 the value of property to a point consistent 
 with the support of an agricultural popula- 
 tion. But Mrs. Drabdump's new lodger 
 paid so much for his rooms that he laid 
 himself open to a suspicion of special inter- 
 est in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of 
 the Psychical Society. The neighborhood 
 imagined him another mad philanthropist, 
 but as he did not appear to be doing any 
 
134 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 good to anybody it relented and conceded 
 his sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally 
 stumbled across him in the passage, did 
 not trouble himself to think about him at 
 all. Lie was too full of other troubles and 
 cares. Though he worked harder than 
 ever, the spirit seemed to have gone out of 
 him. Sometimes he forgot himself in a 
 fine rapture of eloquence — ^lashing himself 
 up into a divine resentment of injustice or 
 a passion of sympathy with the sufferings 
 of his brethren — but mostly he plodded on 
 in dull, mechanical fashion. He still made 
 brief provincial tours, starring a day here 
 and a day there, and everywhere his ad- 
 mirers remarked how jaded and over- 
 worked he looked. There was talk of start- 
 ing a subscription to give him a holiday on 
 the Continent — a luxury obviously unob- 
 tainable on the few pounds allowed him per 
 week. The new lodger would doubtless 
 have been pleased to subscribe, for he 
 seemed quite to like occupying Mortlake^s 
 chamber the nights he was absent, though 
 he was thoughtful enough not to disturb 
 the hardworked landlady in the adjoining 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 135 
 
 room by unseemly noise. Wimp was al- 
 ways a quiet man. 
 
 Meantime the 21st of the month ap- 
 proached, and the East End was in excite- 
 ment. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be 
 present at the ceremony of unveiling the 
 portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by 
 an unknown donor to the Bow Break o' Day 
 Club, and it was to be a great function. 
 The whole affair was outside the lines of 
 party politics, so that even Conservatives 
 and Socialists considered themselves jus- 
 tified in pestering the committee for tickets. 
 To say nothing of ladies. As the commit- 
 tee desired to be present themselves, nine- 
 tenths of the applications for admission had 
 to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. 
 The committee agreed among themselves to 
 exclude the fair sex altogether as the only 
 way of disposing of their womankind who 
 were making speeches as long as Mr. Glad- 
 stone\s. Each committeeman told his sis- 
 ters, female cousins and aunts that the 
 other committeemen had insisted on divest- 
 ing the function of all grace; and what 
 could a man do when he was in a minority 
 of one? 
 
 10 
 
136 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Crowl, who was not a member of the 
 Break o' Day Club, was particularly anx- 
 ious to hear the great orator whom he de- 
 spised; fortunately Mortlake remembered 
 the cobbler's anxiety to hear himself, and 
 on the eve of the ceremony sent him a 
 ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of pos- 
 session when Denzil Cantercot returned, 
 after a sudden and unannounced absence of 
 three days. His clothes were muddy and 
 tattered, his cocked hat was deformed, his 
 cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes 
 were bloodshot. The cobbler nearly 
 dropped the ticket at the sight of him. 
 "Hullo, Cantercot!" he gasped. "Why, 
 where have you been all these days?" 
 
 "Terribly busy !" said Denzil. "Here, give 
 me a glass of water. I'm dry as the Sa- 
 hara." 
 
 Crowl ran inside and got the water, try- 
 ing hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl of their 
 lodger^s return. "Mother" had expressed 
 herself freely on the subject of the poet 
 during his absence, and not in terms which 
 would have commended themselves to the 
 poet's fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 137 
 
 did not hesitate to call him a sponger and 
 a low swindler, who had run away to avoid 
 paying the piper. Her fool of a husband 
 might be quite sure he would never set eyes 
 on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. 
 Growl was wrong. Here was Denzil back 
 again. And yet Mr. Growl felt no sense of 
 victory. He had no desire to crow over his 
 partner and to utter that "See ! didn^t I tell 
 you so?" which is a greater consolation 
 than religion in most of the misfortunes of 
 life. Unfortunately, to get the water, Growl 
 had to go to the kitchen; and as he was 
 usually such a temperate man, this desire 
 for drink in the middle of the day attracted 
 the attention of the lady in possession. 
 Growl had to explain the situation. Mrs. 
 Growl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. 
 Growl followed in dismay, leaving a trail of 
 spilled water in his wake. 
 
 "You good-for-nothing, disreputable 
 scare-crow, where have " 
 
 "Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Gan- 
 tercot is thirsty." 
 
 "Does he care if my children are hun- 
 gry?" 
 
138 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Denzil tossed the water greedily down 
 his throat almost at a gulp, as if it were 
 brandy. 
 
 "Madam," he said, smacking his lips, "I 
 do care. I care intensely. Few things in 
 life would grieve me more deeply than to 
 hear that a child, a dear little child — the 
 Beautiful in a nutshell — had suffered hun- 
 ger. You wrong me." His voice was trem- 
 ulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood 
 in his eyes. 
 
 "Wrong you? Fve no wish to wrong you," 
 said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like to hang 
 you." 
 
 "Don't talk of such ugly things," said 
 Denzil, touching his throat nervously. 
 
 "Well, what have you been doin' all this 
 time?" 
 
 "Why, what should I be doing?" 
 
 "How should I know what became of 
 you? I thought it was another murder." 
 
 "What!" DenziFs glass dashed to frag- 
 ments on the floor. "What do you mean?" 
 
 But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously 
 at Mr. Crowl to reply. He understood the 
 message as if it were printed. It ran : "You 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 139 
 
 have broken one of my best glasses. You 
 have annihilated threepence, or a week's 
 school fees for half the family." Peter 
 wished she would turn the lightning upon 
 Denzil, a conductor down whom it would 
 run innocuously. He stooped down and 
 picked up the pieces as carefully as if they 
 were cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus 
 the lightning passed harmlessly over his 
 head and flew toward Cantercot. 
 
 "What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, 
 as if there had been no interval. "I mean 
 that it would be a good thing if you had 
 been murdered." 
 "What unbeautiful ideas you have, to be 
 sure!" murmured Denzil. 
 
 "Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. 
 Crowl, who had not lived with Peter all 
 these years for nothing. "And if you 
 haven't been murdered what have you been 
 doing?" 
 
 "My dear, my dear," put in Crowl, depre- 
 catingly, looking up from his quadrupedal 
 position like a sad dog, "you are not Canter- 
 cot's keeper." 
 
 lO 
 
140 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "Oh, ain't I?" flashed his spouse. "Who 
 else keeps him I should like to know?" 
 
 Peter went on picking up the pieces of 
 the Koh-i-noor. 
 
 "I have no secrets from Mrs. Growl" Den- 
 zil explained courteously. "I have been 
 working day and night bringing out a new 
 paper. Haven't had a wink of sleep for 
 three nights." 
 
 Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes 
 with respectful interest. 
 
 "The capitalist met me in the street — an 
 old friend of mine — I was overjoyed at the 
 rencontre and told him the idea I'd been 
 brooding over for months and he promised 
 to stand all the racket." 
 
 "What sort of a paper?" said Peter. 
 
 "Can you ask? To what do you think I've 
 been devoting my days and nights but to 
 the cultivation of the Beautiful?" 
 
 "Is that what the paper will be devoted 
 to?" 
 
 "Yes. To the Beautiful." 
 
 "I know," snorted Mrs. Crowl, "with por- 
 traits of actresses." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 141 
 
 "Portraits? Oh, no!" said Denzil. "That 
 would be the True — not the Beautiful." 
 
 "And what's the name of the paper?" 
 asked Crowl. 
 
 "Ah, that's a secret, Peter. Like Scott, 
 I prefer to remain anonymous." 
 
 "Just like your Fads. I'm only a plain 
 man, and I want to know where the fun of 
 anonymity comes in? If I had any gifts, I 
 should like to get the credit. It's a right 
 and natural feeling, to my thinking." 
 
 "Unnatural, Peter; unnatural. We're all 
 born anonymous, and I'm for sticking close 
 to Nature. Enough for me that I dissemi- 
 nate the Beautiful. Any letters come dur- 
 ing my absence, Mrs. Crowl?" 
 
 "No," she snapped. "But a gent named 
 Grodman called. He said you hadn't been 
 to see him for some time, and looked an- 
 noyed to hear you'd disappeared. How 
 much have you let him in for?" 
 
 "The man's in my debt," said Denzil, an- 
 noyed. "I wrote a book for him and he's 
 taken all the credit for it, the rogue! My 
 name doesn't appear even in the Preface. 
 
142 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 What' s that ticket you're looking so loving- 
 ly at, Peter?" 
 
 "That's for to-night — the unveiling of 
 Constant's portrait. Gladstone speaks. 
 Awful demand for places." 
 
 "Gladstone!" sneered Denzil. "Who 
 wants to hear Gladstone? A man who's 
 devoted his life to pulling down the pillars 
 of Church and State." 
 
 "A man's who's devoted his whole life to 
 propping up the crumbling Fads of Religion 
 and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man 
 has his gifts, and I'm burnin' to hear him." 
 
 "I wouldn't go out of my way an inch to 
 hear him," said Denzil; and went up to his 
 room, and when Mrs. Growl sent him up a 
 cup of nice strong tea at tea time, the brat 
 who bore it found him lying dressed on the 
 bed, snoring unbeautifull^^ 
 
 The evening wore on. It was fine frosty 
 weather. The Whitechapel Road swarmed 
 with noisy life, as though it were a Satur- 
 day night. The stars flared in the sky like 
 the lights of celestial costermongers. 
 Everybody was on the alert for the advent 
 of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 143 
 
 through the Road on his journey from the 
 West Bow-wards. But nobody saw him or 
 his carriage, except those about the Hall. 
 Probably he went by tram most of the way. 
 He would have caught cold in an open car- 
 riage, or bobbing his head out of the win- 
 dow of a closed. 
 
 "If he had only been a German prince, 
 or a cannibal king," said Growl bitterly, as 
 he plodded toward the Glub, "we should 
 have disguised Mile End in bunting and 
 blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. 
 He knows his London, and it's no use try 
 ing to hide the facts from him. They must 
 have queer notions of cities, those mon- 
 archs. They must fancy everybody lives in 
 a flutter of flags and walks about under 
 triumphal arches, like as if I were to stitch 
 shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance 
 of chronology Growl had them on to-day, 
 and they seemed to accentuate the simile. 
 
 "And why shouldn't life be fuller of the 
 Beautiful," said Denzil. The poet had 
 brushed the reluctant mud off his garments 
 to the extent it was willing to go, and had 
 washed his face, but his eyes were still 
 
144 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 bloodshot from the cultivation of the Beau- 
 tiful. Deuzil was accompanying Growl to 
 the door of the Olub out of good-fellowship. 
 Denzil was himself accompanied by Grod- 
 man, though less obtrusively. Least ob- 
 trusively was he accompanied by his usual 
 Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. 
 There was a surging nondescript crowd 
 about the Club, and the police, and the door- 
 keeper, and the stewards could with diffi- 
 culty keep out the tide of the ticketless, 
 through which the current of the privileged 
 had equal difficulty in permeating. The 
 streets all around were thronged with peo- 
 ple longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. 
 Mortlake drove up in a hansom (his head 
 a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, 
 swaying and bowing to right and left) and 
 received all the pent-up enthusiasm. 
 
 "Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl. 
 
 "No, I'll see you to the door, Peter." 
 
 They fought their way shoulder to shoul- 
 der. 
 
 Now that Grodman had found Denzil he 
 was not going to lose him again. He had 
 only found him by accident, for he was him- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 145 
 
 self bound to the unveiling ceremony, to 
 which he had been invited in view of his 
 known devotion to the task of unveiling 
 the Mystery. He spoke to one of the police- 
 men about, who said, "Ay, ay, sir," and he 
 was prepared to follow Denzil, if necessary, 
 and to give up the pleasure of hearing Glad- 
 stone for an acuter thrill. The arrest must 
 be delayed no longer. 
 
 But Denzil seemed as if he were going in 
 on the heels of Growl. This would suit 
 Grodman better. He could then have the 
 two pleasures. But Denzil was stopped 
 half-way through the door. 
 
 "Ticket, sir!" 
 
 Denzil drew himself up to his full height. 
 
 "Press," he said, majestically. All the 
 glories and grandeurs of the Fourth Estate 
 were concentrated in that haughty mono- 
 syllable. Heaven itself is full of journal- 
 ists who have overawed St. Peter. But the 
 door-keeper was a veritable dragon. 
 
 "What paper, sir?" 
 
 " 'New Pork Herald,' " said Denzil sharp- 
 ly. He did not relish his word being dis- 
 trusted. 
 
146 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "^New York Herald/" said one of the 
 bystanding stewards, scarce catching the 
 sounds. "Pass him in." 
 
 And in the twinkling of an eye, Denzil 
 had eagerly slipped inside. 
 
 Bat during the brief altercation Wimp 
 had come up. Even he could not make his 
 face quite impassive, and there was a sup- 
 pressed intensity in the eyes and a quiver 
 about the mouth. He went in on DenziPs 
 heels, blocking up the doorway with Grod- 
 man. The two men were so full of their 
 coming coups that they struggled for some 
 seconds, side by side, before they recog- 
 nized each other. Then they shook hands 
 heartily. 
 
 "That was Cantercot just went in, wasn't 
 it, Grodman?" said Wimp. 
 
 "I didn't notice," said Grodman, in tones 
 of utter indifference. 
 
 At bottom W^imp was terribly excited. 
 He felt that his coup was going to be execut- 
 ed under very sensational circumstances. 
 Everything would combine to turn the eyes 
 of the country upon him— nay, of the world, 
 for had not the Big Bow Mystery been dis- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 147 
 
 cussed in every language under the sun? 
 In these electric times the criminal 
 achieves a cosmopolitan reputation. It is 
 a privilege he shares with few other artists. 
 This time Wimp would be one of them ; and, 
 he felt, deservedly so. If the criminal 
 had been cunning to the point of genius in 
 planning the murder, he had been acute 
 to the point of divination in detecting it. 
 Never before had he pieced together so 
 broken a chain. He could not resist the 
 unique opportunity of setting a sensational 
 scheme in a sensational frame-work. The 
 dramatic instinct was strong in him; he 
 felt like a playwright who has constructed 
 a strong melodramatic plot, and has the 
 Drury Lane stage suddenly offered him to 
 present it on. It would be folly to deny 
 himself the luxury, though the presence of 
 Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the cere- 
 mony should perhaps have given him 
 pause. Yet, on the other hand, these were 
 the very factors of the temptation. Wimp 
 went in and took a seat behind Denzil. All 
 the seats were numbered, so that everybody 
 might have the satisfaction of occupying 
 
148 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 somebody else's. Denzil was in the special 
 reserved places in the front row just by the 
 central gangway ; Crowl was squeezed into 
 a corner behind a pillar near the back of 
 the hall. Grodman had been honored with 
 a seat on the platform, which was accessi- 
 ble by steps on the right and left, but he 
 kept his eye on Denzil. The picture of the 
 poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grod- 
 man's head, covered by its curtain of brown 
 holland. There was a subdued buzz of ex- 
 citement about the hall, which swelled into 
 cheers every now and again as some gen- 
 tleman known to fame or Bow took his 
 place upon the platform. It was occupied 
 by several local M. P.'s of varying politics, 
 a number of other Parliamentar}^ satellites 
 of the great man, three or four labor lead- 
 ers, a peer or two of philanthropic preten- 
 sions, a sprinkling of Toynbee and Oxford 
 Hall men, the president and other honorary 
 officials, some of the family and friends of 
 the deceased, together with the inevitable 
 percentage of persons who had no claim to 
 be there save cheek. Gladstone was late — 
 later than Mortlake, who was cheered to 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 149 
 
 the echo when he arrived, someone start- 
 ing "For He^s a Jolly Good Fellow," as if 
 it were a political meeting. Gladstone 
 came in just in time to acknowledge the 
 compliment. The noise of the song, trolled 
 out from iron lungs, had drowned the huz- 
 zahs heralding the old man's advent. The 
 convivial chorus went to Mortlake^s head, 
 as if champagne had really preceded it. His 
 eyes grew moist and dim. He saw himself 
 swimming to the Millenium on weaves of 
 enthusiasm. Ah, hoAV his brother-toilers 
 should be rewarded for their trust in him! 
 With his usual courtesy and considera- 
 tion, Mr. Gladstone had refused to perform 
 the actual unveiling of Arthur Constant's 
 portrait. "That," he said in his postcard, 
 "will fall most appropriately to Mr. Mort- 
 lake, a gentleman who has, I am given 
 to understand, enjoyed the personal friend- 
 ship of the late Mr. Constant, and has 
 co-operated with him in various schemes 
 for the organization of skilled and un- 
 skilled classes of labor, as well as 
 for the diffusion of better ideals— ideals 
 of self-culture and self-restraint — among 
 
150 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the workingmen of Bow, who have been 
 fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in 
 the possession (if in one case unhappily only 
 temporary possession) of two such men of 
 undoubted ability and honesty to direct 
 their divided counsels and to lead them 
 along a road, which, though I cannot pledge 
 myself to approve of it in all its turnings 
 and windings, is yet not unfitted to bring 
 them somewhat nearer to goals to which 
 there are few of us but would extend some 
 measure of hope that the working classes of 
 this great Empire may in due course, yet 
 with no unnecessary delay, be enabled to 
 arrive.'- 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's speech was an expansion 
 of his postcard, punctuated by cheers. The 
 only new thing in it was the graceful and 
 touching way in which he revealed what 
 had been a secret up till then — that the 
 portrait had been painted and presented to 
 the Bow Break o' Day Club, by Lucy Brent, 
 who in the fulness of time would have been 
 Arthur Constant's wife. It was a painting 
 for which he had sat to her while alive, and 
 she had stifled yet pampered her grief by 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 151 
 
 working hard at it siuce his death. The 
 fact added the last touch of pathos to the 
 occasion. CrowPs face was hidden behind 
 his red handkerchief; even the fire of ex- 
 citement in Wimp's eye was quenched for a 
 moment by a tear-drop, as he thought of 
 Mrs. Wimp and Wilfred. As for Grodman, 
 there was almost a lump in his throat. Den- 
 zil Cantercot was the only unmoved man 
 in the room. He thought the episode quite 
 too Beautiful, and was already weaving it 
 into rhyme. 
 
 At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Glad- 
 stone called upon Tom Mortlake to unveil 
 the portrait. Tom rose, pale and excited. 
 His hand faltered as he touched the cord. 
 He seemed overcome with emotion. Was 
 it the mention of Lucy Brent that had 
 moved him to his depths? 
 
 The brown holland fell away — the dead 
 stood revealed as he had been in life. Every 
 feature, painted by the hand of Love, was 
 instinct with vitality : the fine, earnest face, 
 the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow seem- 
 ing still a-throb with the thought of 
 
 Humanity. A thrill ran through the room 
 11 
 
152 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 — there was a low, undeflnable murmur. O, 
 the pathos and the tragedy of it! Every eye 
 was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the 
 dead man in the picture and the living man 
 who stood, pale and agitated, and visibly 
 unable to commence his speech, at the side 
 of the canvas. Suddenly a hand was laid 
 upon the labor leader's shoulder, and there 
 rang through the hall in Wimp's clear, de- 
 cisive tones the words: "Tom Mortlake, I 
 arrest you for the murder of Arthur Con- 
 stant!" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 153 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 For a moment there was an acute, terri- 
 ble silence. Mortlake's face was that of a 
 corpse; the face of the dead man at his 
 side was flushed with the hues of life. To 
 the overstrung nerves of the onlookers, the 
 brooding eyes of the picture seemed sad 
 and stern with menace, and charged with 
 the lightnings of doom. 
 
 It was a horrible contrast. For Wimp, 
 alone, the painted face had fuller, more 
 tragical, meanings. The audience seemed 
 turned to stone. They sat or stood — in 
 every variety of attitude — frozen, rigid. 
 Arthur Constant's picture dominated the 
 scene, the only living thing in a hall of the 
 dead. 
 
 But only for a moment. Mortlake shook 
 off the detective's hand. 
 
 "Boys!" he cried, in accents of infinite 
 indignation, "this is a police conspiracy." 
 
154 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY, 
 
 His words relaxed the tension. The stony 
 figures were agitated. A dull, excited hub- 
 bub answered him. The little cobbler dart- 
 ed from behind his pillar, and leaped upon 
 a bench. The cords of his brow were swol- 
 len with excitement. He seemed a giant 
 overshadowing the hall. 
 
 "Boys!'' he roared, in his best Victoria 
 Park voice, "listen to me. This charge is 
 a foul and damnable lie." 
 
 "Bravo r "Hear, hear!'' "Hooray!" "It 
 is!" was roared back at him from all parts 
 of the room. Everybody rose and stood in 
 tentative attitudes, excited to the last de- 
 gree. 
 
 "Boys!" Peter roared on, "you all know 
 me. I'm a plain man, and I want to know 
 if it's likely a man would murder his best 
 friend." 
 
 "No," in a mighty volume of sound. 
 
 Wimp had scarcely calculated upon Mort- 
 lake's popularity. He stood on the plat- 
 form, pale and anxious as his prisoner. 
 
 "And if he did, why didn't they prove it 
 the first time?" 
 
 "Hear, hear!" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY, 155 
 
 ''And if tliey want to arrest him, why 
 couldn't they leave it till the ceremony was 
 over? Tom Mortlake's not the man to run 
 
 away." 
 
 "Tom Mortlake! Tom Mortlake! Three 
 cheers for Tom Mortlake! Hip, hip, hip, 
 
 hooray !" 
 
 "Three groans for the police." "Hoo! Oo! 
 
 Oo!" 
 
 Wimp's melodrama was not going well. 
 He felt like the author to whose ears is 
 borne the ominous sibilance of the pit. He 
 almost wished he had not followed the cur- 
 tain-raiser with his own stronger drama. 
 Unconsciously the police, scattered about 
 the hall, drew together. The people on the 
 platform knew not what to do. They had 
 all risen and stood in a densely-packed 
 mass. Even Mr. Gladstone's speech failed 
 him in circumstances so novel. The groans 
 died away; the cheers for Mortlake rose 
 and swelled and fell and rose again. Sticks 
 and umbrellas were banged and rattled, 
 handkerchiefs were waved, the thunder 
 deepened. The motley crowd still surging: 
 about the hall took up the cheers, and for 
 
156 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 hundreds of yards around people were 
 going black in the face out of mere irrespon- 
 sible enthusiasm. At last Tom waved his 
 hand— the thunder dwindled, died. The 
 prisoner was master of the situation. 
 
 Grodman stood on the platform, grasping 
 the back of his chair, a curious mocking 
 Mephistophelian glitter about his eyes, his 
 lips wreathed into a half smile. There was 
 no hurry for him to get Denzil Gantercot 
 arrested now. Wimp had made an egre- 
 gious, a colossal blunder. In Grodman's 
 heart there was a great glad calm as of a 
 man who has strained his sinews to win in 
 a famous match, and has heard the judge's 
 word. He felt almost kindly to Denzil now. 
 
 Tom Mortlake spoke. His face was set 
 and stony. His tall figure was drawn up 
 haughtily to its full height. He pushed the 
 black mane back from his forehead with a 
 characteristic gesture. The fevered audi- 
 ence hung upon his lips — the men at the 
 back leaned eagerly forward — the report- 
 ers were breathless with fear lest they 
 should miss a word. What would the great 
 labor leader have to say at this supreme 
 moment? 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 157 
 
 "Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: It is to 
 me a melancholy pleasure to have been hon- 
 ored with the task of unveiling to-night this 
 portrait of a great benefactor to Bow and 
 a true friend to the laboring classes. Ex- 
 cept that he honored me with liis friendship 
 while living, and that the aspirations of my 
 life have, in my small and restricted way, 
 been identical with his, there is little rea- 
 son why this honorable duty should have 
 fallen upon me. Gentlemen, I trust that 
 we shall all find an inspiring influence in 
 the daily vision of the dead, w^ho yet liveth 
 in our hearts and in this noble work of art 
 — wrought, as Mr. Gladstone has told us, 
 by the hand of one who loved him." The 
 speaker paused a moment, his low vibrant 
 tones faltering into silence. "If we humble 
 w^orkingmen of Bow can never hope to exert 
 individually a tithe of the beneficial influ- 
 ence wielded by Arthur Constant, it is yet 
 possible for each of us to walk in the light 
 he has kindled in our midst — a perpetual 
 lamp of self-sacrifice and brotherhood.'' 
 
 That was all. The room rang with 
 cheers. Tom Mortlake resumed his seat. 
 
158 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 To Wimp the man's audacity verged on the 
 Sublime; to Denzil on the Beautiful. 
 Again there was a breathless hush. Mr. 
 Gladstone's mobile face was working with 
 excitement. No such extraordinary scene 
 had occurred in the whole of his extraor- 
 dinary experience. He seemed about to 
 rise. The cheering subsided to a painful 
 stillness. Wimp cut the situation by lay- 
 ing his hand again upon Tom's shoulder. 
 
 "Come quietly with me," he said. The 
 words were almost a whisper, but in the 
 supreme silence they traveled to the ends 
 of the hall. 
 
 "Don't you go, Tom !" The trumpet tones 
 were Peter's, The call thrilled an answer- 
 ing chord of defiance in every breast, and a 
 low, ominous murmur swept through the 
 hall. 
 
 Tom rose, and there was silence again. 
 "Boys," he said, "let me go. Don't make any 
 noise about it. I shall be with you again 
 to-morrow." 
 
 But the blood of the Break o' Day boys 
 was at fever heat. A hurtling mass of men 
 struggled confusedly from their seats. In a 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 159 
 
 moment all was chaos. Tom did not move. 
 Half-a-dozen men, headed by Peter, scaled 
 the platform. Wimp was thrown to one 
 side, and the invaders formed a ring round 
 Tom's chair. The platform people scam- 
 pered like mice from the center. Some hud- 
 dled together in the corners, others slipped 
 out at the rear. The committee congratu- 
 lated themselves on having had the self-de- 
 nial to exclude ladies. Mr. Gladstone's sat- 
 ellites hurried the old man off and into his 
 carriage; though the fight promised to be- 
 come Homeric. Grodman stood at the side 
 of the platform secretly more amused than 
 ever, concerning himself no more with Den- 
 zil Cantercot, who was already strengthen- 
 ing his nerves at the bar upstairs. The po- 
 lice about the hall blew their whistles, and 
 policemen came rushing in from outside 
 and the neighborhood. An Irish M. P. on 
 the platform was waving his gingham like 
 a shillalah in sheer excitement, forgetting 
 his new-found respectability and dreaming 
 himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a 
 conscientious constable floored with a 
 truncheon. But a shower of fists fell on the 
 
160 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 zealot's face, and ke' tottered back bleeding. 
 Then the storm broke in all its fury. The 
 upper air was black with staves, sticks, and 
 umbrellas, mingled with the pallid hail- 
 stones of knobby fists. Yells and groans 
 and hoots and battle-cries blent in gro- 
 tesque chorus, like one of Dvorak's weird 
 diabolical movements. Mortlake stood im- 
 passive, with arms folded, making no fur- 
 ther effort, and the battle raged round him 
 as the water swirls round some steadfast 
 rock. A posse of police from the back 
 fought their way steadily toward him, and 
 charged up the heights of the platform 
 steps, only to be sent tumbling backward, 
 as their leader was hurled at them like a 
 battering ram. Upon the top of the heap 
 fell he, surmounting the strata of police- 
 men. But others clambered upon them, es- 
 calading the platform. A moment more 
 and Mortlake would have been taken, after 
 being well shaken. Then the miracle hap- 
 pened. 
 
 As when of old a reputable goddess ejp 
 machina saw her favorite hero in dire peril, 
 straightway she drew down a cloud from 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 161 
 
 tlie celestial stores of Jupiter and envel- 
 oped her fondling in kindl}^ night, so that 
 his adversary strove with the darkness, so 
 did Growl, the cunning cobbler, the much- 
 daring, essay to insure his friend's safety. 
 He turned off the gas at the meter. 
 
 An Arctic night — unpreceded by twi- 
 light — fell, and there dawned the sabbath 
 of the witches. The darkness could be felt 
 — and it left blood and bruises behind it. 
 When the lights were turned on again, 
 Mortlake was gone. But several of the 
 rioters were arrested, triumphantly. 
 
 And through all, and over all, the face of 
 the dead man who had sought to bring 
 peace on earth, brooded. 
 
 Growl sat meekly eating his supper of 
 bread and cheese, with his head bandaged, 
 while Denzil Gantercot told him the story 
 of how he had rescued Tom Mortlake. He 
 had been among the first to scale the height, 
 and had never budged from Tom's side or 
 from the forefront of the battle till he had 
 seen him safely outside and into a by-street. 
 
162 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "I am SO glad you saw that he got away 
 safely," said Growl, "I wasn't quite sure he 
 would." 
 
 "Yes; but I wish some cowardly fool 
 hadn't turned off the gas. I like men to see 
 that they are beaten." 
 
 "But it seemed — easier," faltered Growl. 
 
 "Easier!" echoed Denzil, taking a deep 
 draught of bitter. "Really, Peter, I'm sorry 
 to find you always will take such low views. 
 It may be easier, but it's shabby. It shocks 
 one's sense of the Beautiful." 
 
 Growl ate his bread and cheese shame- 
 facedly. 
 
 "But what was the use of breaking your 
 head to save him?" said Mrs. Growl with 
 an unconscious pun. "He must be caught," 
 
 "Ah, I don't see how the Useful does come 
 in, now," said Peter thoughtfully. '^But I 
 didn't think of that at the time." 
 
 He swallowed his water quickly and it 
 went the wrong way and added to his con- 
 fusion. It also began to dawn upon him 
 that he might be called to account. Let it 
 be said at once that he wasn't. He had 
 taken too prominent a part. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 163 
 
 Meantime, Mrs. Wimp was bathing Mr. 
 Wimp's eye, and rubbing him generally 
 with arnica. Wimp's melodrama had been, 
 indeed, a sight for the gods. Only, virtue 
 was vanquished and vice triumphant. The 
 villain had escaped, and without striking a 
 blow. 
 
164 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 There was matter and to spare for the 
 papers the next day. The striking cere- 
 mony — Mr. Gladstone's speech — the sensa- 
 tional arrest — these would of themselves 
 have made excellent themes for reports and 
 leaders. But the personality of the man 
 arrested, and the Big Bow Mystery Battle 
 —as it came to be called— gave additional 
 piquancy to the paragraphs and the posters. 
 The behavior of Mortlake put the last touch 
 to the picturesqueness of the position. He 
 left the hall when the lights went out, and 
 walked unnoticed and unmolested through 
 pleiads of policemen to the nearest police 
 station, where the superintendent was al- 
 most too excited to take any notice of his 
 demand to be arrested. But to do him jus- 
 tice, the official yielded as soon as he un^ 
 derstood the situation. It seems incon- 
 ceivable that he did not violate some red- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 165 
 
 tape regulation in so doing. To some this 
 self-surrender was limpid proof of inno- 
 cence; to others it was the damning token 
 of despairing guilt. 
 
 The morning papers were pleasant read- 
 ing for Grodman, who chuckled as continu- 
 ously over his morning eggy as if he had 
 laid it. Jane was alarmed for the sanity of 
 her saturnine master. As her husband 
 would have said, Grodman's grins were not 
 Beautiful. But he made no effort to sup- 
 press them. Not only had Wimp perpe- 
 trated a grotesque blunder, but the journal- 
 ists to a man were down on his great sensa- 
 tion tableau, though their denunciations 
 did not appear in the dramatic columns. 
 The Liberal papers said that he had endan- 
 gered Mr. Gladstone's life; the Conserva- 
 tive that he had unloosed the raging 
 elements of Bow blackguardism, and set in 
 motion forces which might have easily 
 swelled to a riot, involving severe destruc- 
 tion of property. But "Tom Mortlake," 
 was, after all, the thought swamping every 
 other. It was, in a sense, a triumph for the 
 man. 
 
166 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 But Wimp's turn came when Mortlake, 
 who reserved his defense, was brought up 
 before a magistrate, and, by force of the 
 new evidence, fully committed for trial on 
 the charge of murdering Arthur Constant. 
 Then men's thoughts centered again on the 
 Mystery, and the solution of the inexpli- 
 cable problem agitated mankind from 
 China to Peru. 
 
 In the middle of February, the great trial 
 befell. It was another of the opportunities 
 which the Chancellor of the Exchequer neg- 
 lects. So stirring a drama might have 
 easily cleared its expenses — despite the 
 length of the cast, the salaries of the stars, 
 and the rent of the house— in mere advance 
 booking. For it was a drama which (by 
 the rights of Magna Charta) could never be 
 repeated ; a drama which ladies of fashion 
 would have given their earrings to witness, 
 even with the central figure not a woman. 
 And there was a woman in it anyhow, to 
 judge by the little that had transpired at 
 the magisterial examination, and the fact 
 that the country was placarded with bills 
 offering a reward for information concern- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 167 
 
 ing a Miss Jessie Dymond. Mortlake was 
 defended by Sir Charles Brown-Harland, 
 Q. C, retained at the expense of the Mort- 
 lake Defense Fund (subscriptions to which 
 came also from Australia and the Conti- 
 nent), and set on his mettle by the fact that 
 he was the accepted labor candidate for an 
 East-end constituency. Their Majesties, 
 Victoria and the Law, were represented by 
 Mr. Robert Spigot, Q. C. 
 
 Mr. Spigot, Q. C, in presenting his case, 
 said: "I propose to show that the prisoner 
 murdered his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. 
 Arthur Constant, in cold blood, and with 
 the most careful premeditation ; premedita- 
 tion so studied, as to leave the circum- 
 stances of the death an impenetrable mys- 
 tery for weeks to all the world, though for- 
 tunately without altogether baffling the al- 
 most superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward 
 Wimp, of the Scotland Yard Detective De- 
 partment. I propose to show that the 
 motives of the prisoner were jealousy and 
 revenge; jealousy not only of his friend's 
 superior influence over the workingmen he 
 himself aspired to lead, but the more com- 
 
 12 
 
168 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 monplace animosity engendered by the dis- 
 turbing element of a woman having rela- 
 tions to both. If, before my case is 
 complete, it will be my painful duty to show 
 that the murdered man was not the saint 
 the world has agreed to paint him, I shall 
 not shrink from unveiling the truer picture, 
 in the interests of justice, which cannot say 
 nil nisi honum even of the dead. I propose 
 to show that the murder was committed 
 by the prisoner shortly before half -past six 
 on the morning of December 4th, and that 
 the prisoner having, with the remarkable 
 ingenuity which he has shown throughout, 
 attempted to prepare an alibi by feigning 
 to leave London by the first train to Liver- 
 pool, returned home, got in with his latch- 
 key through the street-door, which he had 
 left on the latch, unlocked his victim's bed- 
 room with a key which he possessed, cut 
 the sleeping man's throat, pocketed his ra- 
 zor, locked the door again, and gave it the 
 appearance of being bolted, went down- 
 stairs, unslipped the bolt of the big lock, 
 closed the door behind him, and got to 
 Euston in time for the second train to 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 169 
 
 Liverpool. The fog helped his proceedings 
 throughout." Such was in sum the theory 
 of the prosecution. The pale defiant figure 
 in the dock winced perceptibly under parts 
 of it. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump was the first witness 
 called for the prosecution. She was quite 
 used to legal inquisitiveness by this time, 
 but did not appear in good spirits. 
 
 "On the night of December 3d, you gave 
 the prisoner a letter?" 
 
 "Yes, your ludship." 
 
 "How did he behave when he read it?" 
 
 "He turned very pale and excited. He 
 went up to the poor gentleman's room, and 
 Fm afraid he quarreled with him. Ho 
 might have left his last hours peaceful." 
 (Amusement.) 
 
 "What happened then?" 
 
 "Mr. Mortlake went out in a passion, and 
 came in again in about an hour." 
 
 "He told you he was going away to Liv- 
 erpool very early the next morning." 
 
 "No, your ludship, he said he was goin^ 
 to Devonport." (Sensation.) 
 
170 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "What time did you get up the next morn- 
 ing r 
 
 "Half-past six." 
 
 "That is not your usual time?" 
 
 "No, I always get uj) at six." 
 
 "How do you account for the extra sleepi- 
 ness?" 
 
 "Misfortunes will happen." 
 
 "It wasn't the dull, foggy weather?" 
 
 "No, my lud, else I should never get up 
 early." (Laughter.) 
 
 "You drink something before going to 
 bed?" 
 
 "I like my cup o' tea. I take it strong, 
 without sugar. It always steadies my 
 nerves." 
 
 "Quite so. Where were you when the 
 prisoner told you he was going to Devon- 
 port?" 
 
 "Drinkin' my tea in the kitchen." 
 
 "What should you say if prisoner dropped 
 something in it to make you sleep late?" 
 
 Witness (startled): "He ought to be 
 shot" 
 
 "He might have done it without your no- 
 ticing it, I suppose?" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 171 
 
 "If he was clever enough to murder the 
 poor gentleman, he was clever enough to 
 try and poison me." 
 
 The Judge: "The witness in her replies 
 must confine herself to the evidence." 
 
 Mr. Spigot, Q. C: "I must submit to your 
 lordship that it is a very logical answer, 
 and exactly illustrates the interdepend- 
 ence of the probabilities. Now, Mrs. Drab- 
 dump, let us know what happened when 
 you awoke at half-past six the next morn- 
 ing." 
 
 Thereupon Mrs. Drabdump recapitulated 
 the evidence (with new redundancies, but 
 slight variations) given by her at the in- 
 quest. How she became alarmed — how she 
 found the street-door locked by the big 
 lock — how she roused Grodman, and got 
 him to burst open the door — how they 
 found the body — all this with which 
 the public was already familiar ad nauseam 
 was extorted from her afresh. 
 
 "Look at this key" (key passed to the wit- 
 ness). "Do you recognize it?" 
 
 "Yes; how did you get it? It^s the key 
 
172 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 of my first-floor front. I am sure I left it 
 sticking in tlie door." 
 
 "Did you know a Miss Dymond?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Mortlake's sweetheart. But I 
 knew he would never marry her, poor 
 thing." (Sensation.) 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "He was getting too grand for her." 
 (Amusement). 
 
 "You don't mean anything more than 
 that?" 
 
 "I don't know; she only came to my place 
 once or twice. The last time I set eyes on 
 her must have been in October." 
 
 "How did she appear?" 
 
 "She was very miserable, but she 
 wouldn't let you see it." (Laughter.) 
 
 "How has the prisoner behaved since the 
 murder?" 
 
 "He always seemed very glum and sorry 
 for it." 
 
 Cross-examined: "Did not the prisoner 
 once occupy the bedroom of Mr. Constant, 
 and give it up to him, so that Mr. Constant 
 might have the two rooms on the same 
 floor?" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 173 
 
 "Yes, but he didn't pay as much." 
 
 "And, while occupying this front bed- 
 room, did not the prisoner once lose his key 
 and have another made?" 
 
 "He did; he was very careless." 
 
 "Do you know what the prisoner and Mr. 
 Constant spoke about on the night of De- 
 cember 3d?" 
 
 "No; I couldn't hear." 
 
 "Then how did you know they were quar- 
 reling?" 
 
 "They were talkin' so loud." 
 
 Sir Charles Brown-Harland, Q. C. (sharp- 
 ly): "But I'm talking loudly to you now. 
 Should you say I was quarreling?" 
 
 "It takes two to make a quarrel." 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 "Was the prisoner the sort of man who, 
 in your opinion, would commit a murder?" 
 
 "No, I never should ha' guessed it was 
 him." 
 
 "He always struck you as a thorough 
 gentleman?" 
 
 "No, my lud. I knew he was only a 
 comp." 
 
 "You say the prisoner has seemed de- 
 
174 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 pressed since the murder. Might not that 
 have been due to the disappearance of his 
 sweetheart?" 
 
 "No, he'd more likely be glad to get rid of 
 her." 
 
 "Then he wouldn't be jealous if Mr. Con- 
 stant took her off his hands?" (Sensation.) 
 
 "Men are dog-in-the-mangers." 
 
 "Never mind about men, Mrs. Drabdump. 
 Had the prisoner ceased to care for Miss 
 Dymond?" 
 
 "He didn't seem to think of her, my lud. 
 When he got a letter in her handwriting 
 among his heap he used to throw it aside 
 till he'd torn open the others." 
 
 Brown-Hariand, Q. C. (with a triumph- 
 ant ring in his voice): "Thank you, Mrs. 
 Drabdump. You may sit down." 
 
 Spigot, Q. C: "One moment, Mrs. Drab- 
 dump. You say the prisoner had ceased to 
 care for Miss Dymond. Might not this have 
 been in consequence of his suspecting for 
 some time that she had relations with Mr. 
 Constant?" 
 
 The Judge: "That is not a fair question." 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 175 
 
 Spigot, Q. C: "That will do, thank you, 
 Mrs. Drabclump." 
 
 Brown-Harland, Q. C: "No; one question 
 more, Mrs. Drabdump. Did you ever see 
 anything — say when Miss Dymond came to 
 your house — to make you suspect anything 
 between Mr. Constant and the prisoner's 
 sweetheart?" 
 
 "She did meet him once when Mr. Mort- 
 lake was out." (Sensation.) 
 
 "Where did she meet him?" 
 
 "In the passage. He was going out when 
 she knocked and he opened the door." 
 (Amusement.) 
 
 "You didn't hear what they said?" 
 
 "I ain't a eavesdropper. They spoke 
 friendly and went away together." 
 
 Mr. George Grodman was called and re 
 peated his evidence at the inquest. Cross 
 examined, he testified to the warm friend 
 ship between Mr. Constant and the pris 
 oner. He knew very little about Miss Dy 
 mond, having scarcely seen her. Prisoner 
 had never spoken to him much about her 
 He should not think she was much in pris 
 oner's thoughts. Naturally the prisoner 
 
176 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 had been depressed by the death of his 
 friend. Besides, he was overworked. Wit- 
 ness thought highly of Mortlake's charac- 
 ter. It was incredible that Constant had 
 had improper relations of any kind with his 
 friend's promised wife. Grodman's evi- 
 dence made a very favorable impression on 
 the jury; the prisoner looked his gratitude; 
 and the prosecution felt sorry it had been 
 necessary to call this witness. 
 
 Inspector Howlett and Sergeant Eunny- 
 mede had also to repeat their evidence. Dr. 
 Eobinson, police-surgeon, likewise reten- 
 dered his evidence as to the nature of the 
 wound, and the approximate hour of death. 
 But this time he was much more severely 
 examined. He would not bind himself 
 down to state the time within an hour or 
 two. He thought life had been extinct two 
 or three hours when he arrived, so that the 
 deed had been committed between seven 
 and eight. Under gentle pressure from the 
 prosecuting counsel, he admitted that it 
 might possibly have been between six and 
 seven. Cross-examined, he reiterated his 
 impression in favor of the later hour. 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 177 
 
 Supplementary evidence from medical ex- 
 perts proved as dubious and uncertain as 
 if the court had confined itself to the origi- 
 nal witness. It seemed to be generally 
 agreed that the data for determining the 
 time of death of anybody were too complex 
 and variable to admit of very precise infer- 
 ence; rigor mortis and other symptoms set- 
 ting in within very wide limits and differ- 
 ing largely in different persons. All agreed 
 that death from such a cut must have been 
 practically instantaneous, and the theory 
 of suicide was rejected by all. As a whole 
 the medical evidence tended to fix the time 
 of death, with a high degree of probability, 
 between the hours of six and half -past eight. 
 The efforts of the Prosecution w^ere bent 
 upon throwing back the time of death to as 
 early as possible after about half-past five. 
 The Defense spent all its strength upon 
 pinning the experts to the conclusion thnt 
 death could not have been earlier than 
 seven. Evidently the Prosecution was go- 
 ing to fight hard for the hypothesis that 
 Mortlake had committed the crime in the 
 interval between the first and second trains 
 
178 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 for Liverpool; while the Defense was con- 
 centrating itself on an alibi, showing that 
 the prisoner had traveled by the second 
 train which left Euston Station at a quar- 
 ter-past seven, so that there could have 
 been no possible time for the passage be- 
 tween Bow and Euston. It was an excit- 
 ing struggle. As yet the contending forces 
 seemed equally matched. The evidence had 
 gone as much for as against the prisoner. 
 But everybody knew that worse lay be- 
 hind. 
 
 "Call Edward Wimp." 
 
 The story Edward Wimp had to tell be- 
 gan tamely enough with thrice-threshed- 
 out facts. But at last the new facts came. 
 
 "In consequence of suspicions that had 
 formed in your mind you took up your quar- 
 ters, disguised, in the late Mr. Constant's 
 rooms?" 
 
 "I did; at the commencement of the year. 
 My suspicions had gradually gathered 
 against the occupants of No. 11, Glover 
 Street, and I resolved to quash or confirm 
 these suspicions once for all." 
 
 "Will you tell the jury what followed?" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 179 
 
 "Whenever the prisoner was away for the 
 night I searched his room. I found the key 
 of Mr. Constant's bedroom buried deeply in 
 the side of prisoner's leather sofa. I found 
 what I imagine to be the letter he received 
 on December 3d, in the pages of a ^Brad- 
 shaw' lying under the same sofa. There 
 were two razors about." 
 
 Mr. Spigot, Q. C, said: "The key has al- 
 ready been identified by Mrs. Drabdump. 
 The letter I now propose to read." 
 
 It was undated, and ran as follows: 
 
 "Dear Tom — This is to bid you farewell. 
 It is the best for us all. I am going a long 
 way, dearest. Do not seek to find me, for 
 it will be useless. Think of me as one swal- 
 lowed up by the waters, and be assured that 
 it is only to spare you shame and humilia- 
 tion in the future that I tear myself from 
 you and all the sweetness of life. Darling, 
 there is no other way. I feel you could 
 never marry me now. I have felt it for 
 months. Dear Tom, you will understand 
 what I mean. We must look facts in the 
 face. I hope you will always be friends 
 
180 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 with Mr. Constant. Good by, dear. God 
 bless you! May you always be liappy, and 
 find a worthier wife than I. Perhaps when 
 you are great, and rich, and famous, as you 
 deserve, you will sometimes think not un- 
 kindly of one who, however faulty and un- 
 worthy of you, will at least love you till 
 the end. Yours, till death, Jessie." 
 
 By the time this letter was finished 
 numerous old gentlemen, with wigs or with- 
 out, were observed to be polishing their 
 glasses. Mr. Wimp's examination was re- 
 sumed. 
 
 "After making these discoveries what did 
 you do?" 
 
 "I made inquiries about Miss Dymond, 
 and found Mr. Constant had visited her 
 once or twice in the evening. I imagined 
 there would be some traces of a pecuniary 
 connection. I was allowed by the family 
 to inspect Mr. Constant's check-book, and 
 found a paid check made out for £25 in the 
 name of Miss Dymond. By inquiry at the 
 Bank, I found it had been cashed on No- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 181 
 
 vember 12tli of last year. I then applied 
 for a warrant against the prisoner." 
 
 Cross-examined: "Do yon suggest that 
 the prisoner opened Mr. Constant's bed- 
 room with the key you found?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 Brown-Harland, Q. C. (sarcastically): 
 "And locked the door from within with it 
 on leaving?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 "Will you have the goodness to explain 
 how the trick was done?" 
 
 "It wasn't done. (Laughter.) The 
 prisoner probably locked the door from the 
 outside. Those who broke it open naturally 
 imagined it had been locked from the inside 
 when they found the key inside. The key 
 would, on this theor^^, be on the floor as thd 
 outside locking could not have been effected 
 if it had been in the lock. The first persons 
 to enter the room would naturally believe 
 it had been thrown down in the bursting of 
 the door. Or it might have been left stick- 
 ing very loosely inside the lock so as not to 
 interfere with the turning of the outside 
 
182 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 key in which case it would also probably 
 have been thrown to the ground." 
 
 "Indeed. Very ingenious. And can you 
 also explain how the prisoner could have 
 bolted the door within from the outside?" 
 
 "I can. (Kenewed sensation.) There is 
 only one way in which it was possible^ — and 
 that w^as, of course, a mere conjurer's il- 
 lusion. To cause a locked door to appear 
 bolted in addition, it would only be neces- 
 sary for the person on the inside of the door 
 to wrest the sta})le containing the bolt from 
 the v/oodwork. The bolt in Mr, Constant's 
 bedroom worked perpendicularly. When 
 the staple was torn off, it would simply re- 
 main at rest on the pin of the bolt instead 
 of supporting it or keeping it fixed. A per- 
 son bursting open the door and finding the 
 staple resting on the pin and torn away 
 from the lintel of the door, would, of course, 
 imagine he had torn it away, never dream- 
 ing the v/resting oft' had been done before- 
 hand." (Applause in court, which was in- 
 stantly checked by the ushers.) The coun- 
 sel for the defense felt he had been en- 
 trapped in attempting to be sarcastic 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 183 
 
 with the redoubtable detective. Grodman 
 seemed green with envy. It was the one 
 thing he had not thought of. 
 
 Mrs. Drabdump, Grodman, Inspector 
 Howlett, and Sergeant Runnymede were 
 recalled and re-examined by the embar- 
 rassed Sir Charles Brown-Harland as to the 
 exact condition of the lock and the bolt and 
 the position of the key. It turned out as 
 Wimp had suggested ; so prepossessed were 
 the witnesses with the conviction that the 
 door was locked and bolted from the inside 
 when it was burst open that they were a 
 little hazy about the exact details. The 
 damage had been repaired, so that it was 
 all a question of precise past observation. 
 The inspector and the sergeant testified that 
 the key was in the lock when they saw it, 
 though both the mortise and the bolt were 
 broken. They were not prepared to say 
 that Wimp's theory was impossible; they 
 would even admit it was quite possible that 
 the staple of the bolt had been torn off be- 
 forehand. Mrs. Drabdump could give no 
 clear account of such petty facts in view of 
 her immediate engrossing interest in the 
 
 13 
 
184 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 horrible sight of the corpse. Grodman 
 alone was positive that the key was in the 
 door when he burst it open. No, he did not 
 remember picking it up from the floor and 
 putting it in. And he was certain that the 
 staple of the bolt was not broken, from the 
 resistance he experienced in trying to shake 
 the upper panels of the door. 
 
 By the Prosecution: "Don't you think, 
 from the comparative ease with which the 
 door yielded to your onslaught, that it is 
 highly probable that the pin of the bolt was 
 not in a firmly fixed staple, but in one al- 
 ready detached from the woodwork of the 
 lintel?" 
 
 "The door did not yield so easily .'' 
 "But you must be a Hercules." 
 "Not quite; the bolt was old, and the 
 woodwork crumbling; the lock was new 
 and shoddy. But I have always been a 
 strong man." 
 
 "Very w^ell, Mr. Grodman. I hope you 
 will never appear at the music-halls." 
 (Laughter.) 
 
 Jessie Dymond's landlady was the next 
 witness for the prosecution. She cor- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 185 
 
 roborated Wimp's statements as to Con- 
 stant's occasional visits, and narrated how 
 the girl had been enlisted by the dead 
 philanthropist as a collaborator in some of 
 his enterprises. But the most telling por- 
 tion of her evidence was the story of how, 
 late at night, on December 3d, the prisoner 
 called upon her and inquired wildly about 
 the whereabouts of his sweetheart. He said 
 he had just received a mysterious letter 
 from Miss Dymond saying she was gone. 
 She (the landlady) replied that she could 
 have told him that weeks ago, as her un- 
 grateful lodger was gone now some three 
 weeks without leaving a hint behind her. 
 In answer to his most ungentlemanly rag- 
 ing and raving, she told him it served him 
 ri^rht, as he should have looked after her 
 better, and not kept away for so long. She 
 reminded him that there were as good fisli 
 in the sea as ever came out, and a girl of 
 Jessie's attractions need not pine away (as 
 she had seemed to be pining away) for lack 
 of appreciation. He then called her a liar 
 and left her, and she hoped never to see his 
 
186 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 face again, though she was not surprised 
 to see it in the dock. 
 
 Mr. Fitzjanies Montgomery, a bank 
 clerk, remembered cashing the check pro- 
 duced. He particularly remembered it, be- 
 cause he paid the money to a very jDretty 
 girl. She took the entire amount in gold. 
 At this point the case was adjourned. 
 
 Denzil Cantercot was the Jftrst witness 
 called for the prosecution on the resump- 
 tion of the trial. Pressed as to whether he 
 had not told Mr. Wimp that he had over- 
 heard the prisoner denouncing Mr. Con- 
 stant, he could not say. He had not actually 
 heard the prisoner's denunciations; he 
 might have given Mr. Wimp a false im- 
 pression, but then Mr. Wimp was so 
 prosaically literal. (Laughter.) Mr. Growl 
 had told him something of the kind. Cross- 
 examined, he said Jessie Dymond was a 
 rare spirit and she always reminded him of 
 Joan of Arc. 
 
 Mr. Crowl, being called, was extremely 
 agitated. He refused to take the oath, and 
 informed the court that the Bible was a 
 Fad. He could not swear by anything so 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 187 
 
 self-contradictory. He would affirm. He 
 could not deny — though he looked like wish- 
 ing to — that the prisoner had at first been 
 rather mistrustful of Mr. Constant^ but he 
 was certain that the feeling had quickly 
 worn off. Yes, he was a great friend of 
 the prisoner, but he didn^t see why that 
 should invalidate his testimony, especially 
 as he had not taken an oath. Certainly the 
 prisoner seemed rather depressed when he 
 saw him on Bank Holiday, but it was over- 
 work on behalf of the people and for the 
 demolition of the Fads. 
 
 Several other familiars of the prisoner 
 gave more or less reluctant testimony as to 
 his sometime prejudice against the ama- 
 teur rival labor leader. His expressions of 
 dislike had been strong and bitter. The 
 Prosecution also produced a poster an- 
 nouncing that the prisoner would preside 
 at a great meeting of clerks on December 
 4th. He had not turned up at this meeting 
 nor sent any explanation. Finally, there 
 was the evidence of the detectives who 
 originally arrested him at Liverpool Docks 
 
 13 
 
188 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 in view of his suspicious demeanor. This 
 completed the case for the prosecution. 
 Sir Charles Brown-Harlancl, Q. C, rose 
 with a swagger and a rustle of his silk 
 gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory 
 of the defense. He said he did not purpose 
 to call any witnesses. The hypothesis of 
 the prosecution was so inherently childish 
 and inconsequential, and so dependent 
 upon a bundle of interdependent probabili- 
 ties that it crumbled away at the merest 
 touch. The prisoner's character was of un- 
 blemished integrity, his last public appear- 
 ance had been made on the same platform 
 with Mr. Gladstone, and his honesty and 
 highmindedness had been vouched for by 
 statesmen of the highest standing. His 
 movements could be accounted for from 
 hour to hour — and those with which the 
 prosecution credited him rested on no 
 tangible evidence whatever. He was also 
 credited with superhuman ingenuity and 
 diabolical cunning of which he had shown 
 no previous symptom. Hypothesis was 
 piled on hypothesis, as in the old Oriental 
 legend, where the world rested on the ele- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 189 
 
 phant and the elephant on the tortoise. It 
 might be worth while, however, to point out 
 that it was at least quite likely that the 
 death of Mr. Constant had not taken place 
 before seven, and as the prisoner left Eus- 
 ton Station at 7:15 a. m. for Liverpool, he 
 could certainly not have got there from 
 Bow in the time; also that it was hardly 
 possible for the prisoner, who could prove 
 being at Euston Station at 5:25 a. m., to 
 travel backward and forward to Glover 
 Street and commit the crime all within less 
 than two hours. "The real facts," said Sir 
 Charles impressively, "are most simple. 
 The prisoner, partly from pressure of work, 
 partly (he had no wish to conceal) from 
 worldly ambition, had begun to neglect 
 Miss Dymond, to whom he was engaged to 
 be married. The man was but human, and 
 his head was a little turned by his growing 
 importance. Nevertheless, at heart he was 
 still deeply attached to Miss Dymond. She, 
 however, appears to have jumped to the 
 conclusion that he had ceased to love her, 
 that she was unworthy of him, unfitted by 
 education to take her place side by side with 
 
190 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 him in the new spheres to which he was 
 mounting — that, in short, she was a drag 
 on his career. Being, by all accounts, a 
 girl of remarkable force of character, she 
 resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving 
 London, and, fearing lest her affianced hus- 
 band's conscientiousness should induce him 
 to sacrifice himself to her; dreading also, 
 perhaps, her own weakness, she made the 
 parting absolute, and the place of her 
 refuge a mystery. A theory has been sug- 
 gested which drags an honored name in the 
 mire — a theory so superfluous that I shall 
 only allude to it That Arthur Constant 
 could have seduced, or had any improper 
 relations with his friend's betrothed is a 
 hypothesis to which the lives of both give 
 the lie. Before leaving London — or Eng- 
 land — Miss Dymond wrote to her aunt in 
 Devonport — her only living relative in this 
 country — asking her as a great favor to 
 forward an addressed letter to the prisoner, 
 a fortnight after receipt. The aunt obeyed 
 implicitly. This was the letter which fell 
 like a thunderbolt on the prisoner on the 
 night of December 3d. All his old love re- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 191 
 
 turned — he was full of self-reproach and 
 pity for the poor girl. The letter read 
 ominously. Perhaps she was going to put 
 an end to herself. His first thought was to 
 rush up to his friend, Constant, to seek his 
 advice. Perhaps Constant knew something 
 of the affair. The prisoner knew the two 
 were in not infrequent communication. It 
 is possible — my lord and gentlemen of the 
 jury, I do not wish to follow the methods 
 of the prosecution and confuse theory with 
 fact, so I say it is possible — that Mr. Con- 
 stant had supplied' her with the £25 to leave 
 the country. He was like a brother to her, 
 perhaps even acted imprudently in calling 
 upon her, though neither dreamed of evil. 
 It is possible that he may have encouraged 
 her in her abnegation and in her altruistic 
 aspirations, perhaps even without knowing 
 their exact drift, for does he not speak in 
 his very last letter of the fine female char- 
 acters he was meeting, and the influence for 
 good he had over individual human souls? 
 Still, this we can now never know, unless 
 the dead speak or the absent return. It is 
 also not impossible that Miss Dymond was 
 
192 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 entrusted with the £25 for charitable pur- 
 poses. But to come back to certainties. 
 The prisoner consulted Mr. Constant about 
 the letter. He then ran to Miss Dymond's 
 lodgings in Stepney Green, knowing before- 
 hand his trouble would be futile. The let- 
 ter bore the postmark of Devonport. He 
 knew the girl had an aunt there; possibly 
 she might have gone to her. He could not 
 telegraph, for he was ignorant of the ad- 
 dress. He consulted his ^Bradshaw,' and 
 resolved to leave by the 5:30 a. m. from 
 Paddington, and told his landlady so. He 
 left the letter in the ^Bradshaw/ which 
 ultimately got thrust among a pile of papers 
 under the sofa, so that he had to get an- 
 other. He was careless and disorderly, and 
 the key found by Mr. Wimp in his ^ofa must 
 have lain there for some years, having been 
 lost there in the days when he occupied the 
 bedroom afterward rented by Mr. Con- 
 stant Afraid to miss his train, he did not 
 undress on that distressful night. Mean- 
 time the thought occurred to him that 
 Jessie was too clever a girl to leave so easj^ 
 a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 193 
 
 she would be going to her married brother 
 in America, and had gone to Devonport 
 merely to bid her aunt farewell. He de- 
 termined therefore to get to Liverpool, with- 
 out wasting time at Devonport, to institute 
 inquiries. Not suspecting the delay in the 
 transit of the letter, he thought he might 
 yet stop her, even at the landing-stage or on 
 the tender. Unfortunately his cab went 
 slowly in the fog, he missed the first train, 
 and wandered about brooding disconso- 
 lately in the mist till the second. At Liver- 
 pool his suspicious, excited demeanor pro- 
 cured his momentary arrest. Since then 
 the thought of the lost girl has haunted and 
 broken him. That is the whole, the plain, 
 and the sufficing story." The effective wit- 
 nesses for the defense were, indeed, few. It 
 is so hard to prove a negative. There was 
 Jessie's aunt, who bore out the statement 
 of the counsel for the defense. There were 
 the porters who saw him leave Euston by 
 the 7:15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just 
 too late for the 5 :15 ; there was the cabman 
 (2,138), who drove him to Euston just in 
 time, he (witness) thought, to catch the 5:15 
 
194 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 a. m. Under cross-examination, the cab- 
 man got a little confused; he was asked 
 whether, if he really picked up the prisoner 
 at Bow Railway Station at about 4:30, he 
 ought not to have caught the first train at 
 Euston. He said the fog made him drive 
 rather slowly, but admitted the mist was 
 transparent enough to warrant full speed. 
 He also admitted being a strong trade 
 unionist, Spigot, Q. C, artfully extort- 
 ing the admission as if it were of the utmost 
 significance. Finally, there were numerous 
 witnesses — of all sorts and conditions — to 
 the prisoner's high character, as well as to 
 Arthur Constant's blameless and moral 
 life. 
 
 In his closing speech on the third day of 
 the trial. Sir Charles pointed out with great 
 exhaustiveness and cogency the flimsiness 
 of the case for the prosecution, the number 
 of hypotheses it involved, and their mutual 
 interdependence. Mrs. Drabdump was a 
 witness whose evidence must be accepted 
 with extreme caution. The jury must re- 
 member that she was unable to dissociate 
 her observations from her inferences, and 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 195 
 
 thought that the prisoner and Mr. Constant 
 were quarreling merely because they were 
 agitated. He dissected her evidence, and 
 showed that it entirely bore out the story 
 of the defense. He asked the jury to bear In 
 mind that no positive evidence (whether of 
 cabmen or others) had been given of the 
 various and complicated movements at- 
 tributed to the prisoner on the morning of 
 December 4th, between the hours of 5:25 
 and 7:15 a. m., and that the most important 
 witness on the theory of the prosecution- 
 he meant, of course. Miss Dymond— had not 
 been produced. Even if she were dead, and 
 her body were found, no countenance would 
 be given to the theory of the prosecution, 
 for the mere conviction that her lover had 
 deserted her would be a sufficient explana- 
 tion of her suicide. Beyond the ambiguous 
 letter, no title of evidence of her dishonor 
 — on which the bulk of the case against the 
 prisoner rested — had been adduced. As for 
 the motive of political jealousy that had 
 been a mere passing cloud. The two men 
 had become fast friends. As to the circum- 
 stances of the alleged crime, the medical evi- 
 
196 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 dence was on the whole in favor of the time 
 of death being late; and the prisoner had 
 left London at a quarter past seven. The 
 drugging theory was absurd, and as for the 
 too clever bolt and lock theories, Mr. Grod- 
 man, a trained scientific observer, had pooh- 
 poohed them. He would solemnly exhort 
 the jury to remember that if they con- 
 demned the prisoner they would not only 
 send an innocent man to an ignominious 
 death on the flimsiest circumstantial evi- 
 dence, but they would deprive the working- 
 men of this country of one of their truest 
 friends and their ablest leader. 
 
 The conclusion of Sir Charles' vigorous 
 speech was greeted with irrepressible ap- 
 plause. 
 
 Mr. Spigot, Q. C, in closing the case for 
 the prosecution, asked the jury to return a 
 verdict against the prisoner for as malicious 
 and premeditated a crime as ever disgraced 
 the annals of any civilized country. His 
 cleverness and education had only been 
 utilized for the devil's ends, while his repu- 
 tation had been used as a cloak. Every- 
 thing pointed strongly to the prisoner's 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 197 
 
 guilt. On receiving Miss Dymond's letter 
 announcing her shame, and (probably) her 
 intention to commit suicide, he had 
 hastened upstairs to denounce Constant. 
 He had then rushed to the girl's lodgings, 
 and, finding his worst fears confirmed, 
 planned at once his diabolically ingenious 
 scheme of revenge. He told his landlady 
 he was going to Devonport, so that if he 
 bungled, the police would be put tempora- 
 rily off his track. His real destination was 
 Liverpool, for he intended to leave the coun- 
 try. Lest, however, his plan should break 
 down here, too, he arranged an ingenious 
 alibi by being driven to Euston for the 5 :15 
 train to Liverpool. The cabman would not 
 know he did not intend to go by it, but 
 meant to return to 11, Glover Street, there 
 to perpetrate this foul crime, interruption 
 to which he had possibly barred by drug- 
 ging his landlady. His presence at Liver- 
 pool (whither he really went by the second 
 train) would corroborate the cabman's 
 story. That night he had not undressed nor 
 gone to bed ; he had plotted out his devilish 
 scheme till it was perfect ; the fog came as 
 
198 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 an unexpected ally to cover his movements. 
 Jealousy, outraged affection, the desire for 
 revenge, the lust for political power— these 
 were human. They might pity the criminal, 
 they could not find him innocent of the 
 crime. 
 
 Mr. Justice Grogie, summing up, began 
 dead against the prisoner. Reviewing the 
 evidence, he pointed out that plausible 
 hypotheses neatly dove-tailed did not neces- 
 sarily weaken one another, the fitting so 
 well together of the whole rather making 
 for the truth of the parts. Besides, the case 
 for the prosecution was as far from being 
 all hypothesis as the case for the defense 
 was from excluding hypothesis. The key, 
 the letter, the reluctance to produce the 
 letter, the heated interview with Constant, 
 the misstatement about the prisoner's des- 
 tination, the flight to Liverpool, the false 
 tale about searching for a "him," the 
 denunciations of Constant, all these 
 were facts. On the other hand, there 
 were various lacunae and hypotheses 
 in the case for the defense. Even 
 conceding the somewhat dubious alibi 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 199 
 
 afforded by the prisoner's presence at Eus- 
 ton at 5:25 a. m., there was no attempt to 
 account for his movements between that 
 and 7:15 a. m. It was as possible that he 
 returned to Bow as that he lingered about 
 Euston. There was nothing in the medical 
 evidence to make his guilt impossible. Nor 
 was there anything inherently impossible 
 in Constant's yielding to the sudden tempta- 
 tion of a beautiful girl, nor in a working- 
 girl deeming herself deserted, temporarily 
 succumbing to the fascinations of a gentle- 
 man and regretting it bitterly afterward. 
 What had become of the girl was a mys- 
 tery. Hers might have been one of those 
 nameless corpses which the tide swirls up 
 on slimy river banks. The jury must re- 
 member, too, that the relation might not 
 have actually passed into dishonor, it 
 might have been just grave enough to smite 
 the girPs conscience, and to induce her to 
 behave as she had done. It was enough 
 that her letter should have excited the jeal- 
 ousy of the prisoner. There was one other 
 point which he would like to impress on the 
 jury, and which the counsel for the prosecu- 
 
 14 
 
200 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 tion had not sufficiently insisted upon. This 
 was that the prisoner's guiltiness was the 
 only plausible solution that had ever been 
 advanced of the Bow Mystery. The medic- 
 al evidence agreed that Mr. Constant did 
 not die by his own hand. Someone must 
 therefore have murdered him. The number 
 of people who could have had any possible 
 reason or opportunity to murder him was 
 extremely small. The prisoner had both 
 reason and opportunity. By what logicians 
 called the method of exclusion, suspicion 
 would attach to him on even slight evi- 
 dence. The actual evidence was strong and 
 plausible, and now that Mr. Wimp's in- 
 genious theory had enabled them to under- 
 stand how the door could have been ap- 
 parently locked and bolted from within, the 
 last difficulty and the last argument for 
 suicide had been removed. The prisoner's 
 guilt was as clear as circumstantial evi- 
 dence could make it. If they let him go 
 free, the Bow Mystery might henceforward 
 be placed among the archives of unavenged 
 assassinations. Having thus well-nigh 
 hung the prisoner, the judge wound up by 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 201 
 
 insisting on the high probability of the 
 story for the defense, though that, too, was 
 dependent in important details upon the 
 prisoner's mere private statements to his 
 counsel. The jury, being by this time suf- 
 ficiently muddled by his impartiality, were 
 dismissed, with the exhortation to allow due 
 weight to every fact and probability in de- 
 termining their righteous verdict. 
 
 The minutes ran into hours, but the jury 
 did not return. The shadows of night fell 
 across the reeking, fevered court before 
 they announced their verdict — 
 
 "Guilty." 
 
 The judge put on his black cap. 
 
 The great reception arranged outside was 
 a fiasco; the evening banquet was indefi- 
 nitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grod- 
 man felt like a whipped cur. 
 
202 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 "So you were right," Denzil could not 
 help saying as he greeted Grodman a week 
 afterward. "I shall not live to tell the 
 story of how you discovered the Bow mur- 
 derer." 
 
 "Sit down," growled Grodman ; "perhaps 
 you v/ill after all." There was a dangerous 
 gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had 
 spoken. 
 
 "I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell 
 you that on the night Wimp arrested Mort^ 
 lake I had made preparations for your ar- 
 rest." 
 
 Denzil gasped, "What for?" 
 
 "My dear Denzil, there is a litle law in 
 this country invented for the confusion of 
 the poetic. The greatest exponent of the 
 Beautiful is only allowed the same number 
 of wives as the greengrocer. I do not 
 blame you for not being satisfied with Jane 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 203 
 
 — she is a good servant but a bad mistress 
 — but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her 
 that Jane had a prior right in you, and 
 unjust to Jane not to let her know of the 
 contract with Kitty." 
 
 "They both know it now well enough, 
 curse 'em," said the poet. 
 
 "Yes; your secrets are like your situa- 
 tions — you can't keep them long. My poor 
 poet, I pity you — betwixt the devil and the 
 deep sea." 
 
 "They're a pair of harpies, each holding 
 over me the Damocles sword of an arrest 
 for bigamy. Neither loves me." 
 
 "I should think they would come in very 
 useful to you. You plant one in my house 
 to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant 
 one in Wimp's house to tell Wimp's secrets 
 to me, I supx>ose. Out with some, then." 
 
 "Upon my honor you wrong me. Jane 
 brought me here, not I Jane. As for Kitty, 
 I never had such a shock in my life as at 
 finding her installed in Wimp's house." 
 
 "She thought it safer to have the law 
 handy for your arrest. Besides, she prob- 
 ably desired to occupy a parallel position to 
 
 14 
 
204 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Janets. She must do something for a living ; 
 you wouldn't do anything for hers. And 
 so you couldn't go anywhere without meet- 
 ing a wife! Ila! ha! ha! Serve you right, 
 my polygamous poet." 
 
 "But why should you arrest me?" 
 
 "Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best 
 friend you ever had in this cold, prosaic 
 world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my 
 claret, written my book, smoked my cigars, 
 and pocketed my money. And yet, when 
 you have an important piece of information 
 bearing on a mystery about which I am 
 thinking day and night, you calmly go and 
 sell it to Wimp." 
 
 "I did-didn't," stammered Denzil. 
 
 "Liar! Do you think Kitty has any se- 
 crets from me? As soon as I discovered 
 your two marriages I determined to have 
 you arrested for — your treachery. But 
 when I found you had, as I thought, put 
 Wimp on the wrong scent, when I felt sure 
 that by arresting Mortlake he was going to 
 make a greater ass of himself than even na- 
 ture had been able to do, then I forgave you. 
 I let you walk about the earth — and drink 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 205 
 
 freely. Now it is Wimp who crows— 
 
 everybody pats him on the back — they call 
 him the mystery^ man of the Scotland-Yard 
 tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, 
 and all through your telling Wimp about 
 Jessie Dymond!" 
 
 "It was you yourself," said Denzil sul- 
 lenly. "Everybody was giving it up. But 
 you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur 
 Constant did in the last few months of his 
 life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on 
 Jessie sooner or later. I'd have throttled 
 Constant, if I had known he'd touched her," 
 he wound up with irrelevant indignation. 
 
 Grodman winced at the idea that he him- 
 self had worked ad majorem gloriam of 
 Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let 
 out as much at the Christmas dinner? 
 
 "What's past is past," he said gruffly. 
 "But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you go to 
 Portland." 
 
 "How can I help Tom hanging?" 
 
 "Help the agitation as much as you can. 
 Write letters under all sorts of names to all 
 the papers. Get everybody you know to 
 sign the great petition. Find out where 
 
206 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Jessie Dymond is — ^the girl who holds the 
 proof of Tom Mortlake^s inuoceuce." 
 
 "You really believe him innocent?" 
 
 "Don't be satirical, Denzii. Haven't I 
 taken the chair at all the meetings? Am 
 I not the most copious correspondent of the 
 Press?" 
 
 "I thought it was only to spite Wimp." 
 
 "Eubbish. It's to save poor Tom. He 
 no more murdered Arthur Constant than 
 — you did!" He laughed an unpleasant 
 laugh. 
 
 Denzii bade him farewell, frigid with 
 fear. 
 
 Grodman was up to his ears in letters 
 and telegrams. Somehow he had become 
 the leader of the rescue party — suggestions, 
 subscriptions came from all sides. The sug- 
 gestions were burnt, the subscriptions 
 acknowledged in the papers and used for 
 hunting up the missing girl. Lucy Brent 
 headed the list with a hundred pounds. It 
 was a fine testimony to her faith in her dead 
 lover's honor. 
 
 The release of the Jury had unloosed 
 "The Greater Jury," which always now sits 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 207 
 
 upon the smaller. Every means was taken 
 to nullify the value of the "palladium of 
 British liberty." The foreman and the jur- 
 ors were interviewed, the judge was judged, 
 and by those who were no judges. The 
 Home Secretary (who had done nothing be- 
 yond accepting office under the Crown) was 
 vituperated, and sundry provincial persons 
 wrote confidentially to the Queen. Arthur 
 Constant's backsliding cheered many by 
 convincing them that others v/ere as bad 
 as themselves; and well-to-do tradesmen 
 saw in Mortlake's wickedness the per- 
 nicious effects of socialism. A dozen new 
 theories vrere afloat. Constant had com- 
 mitted suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as 
 witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky, 
 or he had been murdered by his Mahatma, 
 or victimized by Hypnotism, Mesmerism, 
 Somnambulism, and other v»'eird abstrac- 
 tions. Grodman's great point was — Jessie 
 Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. 
 The electric current scoured the civilized 
 world in search of her. What wonder if 
 the shrewder sort divined that the indomi- 
 table detective had fixed his last hope on 
 
208 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 the girFs guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why 
 should she not have avenged them herself? 
 Did she not always remind the poet of Joan 
 of Arc? 
 
 Another week passed; the shadow of the 
 gallows crept over the days; on, on, re- 
 morselessly drawing nearer, as the last 
 ray of hope sank below the horizon. The 
 Home Secretary remained inflexible; the 
 great petitions discharged their signature.^ 
 at him in vain. He was a Conservative, 
 sternly conscientious ; and the mere insinu- 
 ation that his obstinacy was due to the 
 politics of the condemned onlj^ hardened 
 him against the temptation of a cheap repu- 
 tation for magnanimity. He would not 
 even grant a respite, to increase the chances 
 of the discovery of Jessie Dymond. In the 
 last of the three weeks there was a final 
 monster meeting of protest. Grodman 
 again took the chair, and several distin- 
 guished faddist's were present, as well as 
 numerous respectable members of society. 
 The Home Secretary acknowledged the re- 
 ceipt of their resolutions. The Trade 
 Unions were divided vi their allegiance; 
 
I'HB BIG BOW MYSTERY. 209 
 
 some whispered of faith and hope, others 
 of financial defalcations. The former es- 
 sayed to organize a procession and an indig- 
 nation meeting on the Sunday preceding 
 the Tuesday fixed for the execution, but it 
 fell through on a rumor of confession. The 
 Monday papers contained a last masterly 
 letter from Grodman exposing the weak- 
 ness of the evidence, but they knew noth- 
 ing of a confession. The prisoner was mute 
 and disdainful, professing little regard for 
 a life empty of love and burdened with self- 
 reproach. He refused to see clergymen. 
 He was accorded an interview with Miss 
 Brent in the presence of a jailer, and sol- 
 emnly asseverated his respect for her dead 
 lover^s memory. Monday buzzed with 
 rumors; the evening papers chronicled 
 them hour by hour. A poignant anxiety 
 was abroad. The girl would be found. 
 Some miracle would happen. A reprieve 
 would arrive. The sentence would be com- 
 muted. But the short day darkened into 
 night even as Mortlake's short day was 
 darkening. And the shadow of the gallows 
 crept on and on and seemed to mingle with 
 the twilight. 
 
210 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Growl stood at the door of his shop, un- 
 able to work. His big gray eyes were heavy 
 with unshed tears. The dingy wintry road 
 seemed one vast cemetery ; the street lauip;^ 
 twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused 
 sounds of the street-life reached his ear as 
 from another world. He did not see the 
 people who flitted to and fro amid the gath- 
 ering shadows of the cold, dreary night. 
 One ghastly vision flashed and faded and 
 flashed upon the background of the duski- 
 ness. 
 
 Denzil stood beside him, smoking in 
 silence. A cold fear was at his heart. That 
 terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord 
 was tightening round Mortlake, he felt the 
 convict's chains tightening round himself. 
 And yet there was one gleam of hope, feeble 
 as the yellow flicker of the gas-lamp across 
 the way. Grodman had obtained an inter- 
 view with the condemned late that after- 
 noon, and the parting had been painful, but 
 the evening paper, that in its turn had ob- 
 tained an interview with the ex-detective, 
 announced on its placard: 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 211 
 
 "GKODMAN STILL CONFIDENT," 
 
 and the thousands who yet pinned their 
 faith on this extraordinary man refused to 
 extinguish the last sparks of hone. Denzil 
 had bought the paper and scanned it eager- 
 ly, but there was nothing save the vague 
 assurance that the indefatigable Grodman 
 was still almost pathetically expectant of 
 the miracle. Denzil did not share the ex- 
 pectation; he meditated flight. 
 
 "Peter," he said at last, "I'm afraid it's 
 all over." 
 
 Crowl nodded, heart-broken. "All over!" 
 he repeated, "and to think that he dies^ — 
 and it is — all over!" 
 
 He looked despairingly at the blank win- 
 ter sky, where leaden clouds shut out the 
 stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night 
 alive and thinking. To-morrow night a 
 clod, with no more sense or motion than a 
 bit of leather! No compensation nowhere 
 for being cut off innocent in the pride of 
 youth and strength! A man who has al- 
 ways preached the Useful day and night, 
 
212 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 and toiled and suffered for his fellows. 
 Where's the justice of it, whereas the justice 
 of it?" he demanded fiercely. Again his 
 wet eyes wandered upward tovfard heaven, 
 that heaven away from vvhich the soul 
 of a dead saint at the Antipodes Wiis 
 speeding into infinite space. 
 
 "Well, where was the justice for Arthur 
 Constant if he, too, was innocent?" said 
 Denzil. "Keally, Peter, I don't see why 
 you should take it for granted that Tom is 
 so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed 
 labor leaders are, after all, men of no aes- 
 thetic refinement, with no sense of the Beau- 
 tiful ; you cannot expect them to be exempt 
 from the coarser forms of crime. Human- 
 ity must look to far other leaders — to the 
 seers and the poets!" 
 
 "Cantercot, if you say Tom's guilty I'll 
 knock you down." The little cobbler 
 turned upon his tall friend like a roused 
 lion. Then he added, "I beg your pardon, 
 Cantercot, I don't mean that. After all, 
 I've no grounds. The judge is an honest 
 man, and with gifts I can't lay claim to. 
 But I believe in Tom with all my heart 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 213 
 
 And if Tom is guilty I believe in the Cause 
 of the People with all my heart all the same. 
 The Fads are doomed to death, they may be 
 reprieved, but they must die at last." 
 
 He drew a deep sigh, and looked along 
 the dreary Eoad. It was quite dark now, 
 but by the light of the lamps and the gas in 
 the shop windows the dull, monotonous 
 Koad lay revealed in all its sordid, familiar 
 outlines; with its long stretches of chill 
 pavement, its unlovely architecture, and its 
 endless stream of prosaic pedestrians. 
 
 A sudden consciousness of the futility of 
 his existence pierced the little cobbler like 
 an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a 
 hundred million lives like his, sv/elling and 
 breaking like bubbles on a dark ocean, un- 
 heeded, uncared for. 
 
 A newsboy passed along, clamoring "The 
 Bow murderer, preparations for the hexe- 
 cution !" 
 
 A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's 
 frame. His eyes ranged sightlessly after 
 the boy; the merciful tears filled them at 
 last. 
 
 ^The Cause of the People," he murmured, 
 
214 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 brokenly, "I believe in tlie Cause of the 
 People. There is nothing else/^ 
 
 "Peter, come in to tea, you'll catch cold," 
 said Mrs. Crowl. 
 
 Denzil went in tO' tea and Peter followed. 
 * * * * 
 
 Meantime, round the house of the Home 
 Secretary, who was in town, an ever-aug- 
 menting crowd was gathered, eager to 
 catch the first whisper of a reprieve. 
 
 The house was guarded by a cordon of 
 police, for there was no inconsiderable dan- 
 ger of a popular riot. At times a section 
 of the crowd groaned and hooted. Once a 
 volley of stones was discharged at the win- 
 dows. The newsboys were busy vending 
 their special editions, and the reporters 
 struggled through the crowd, clutching de- 
 scriptive pencils, and ready to rush off to 
 telegraph offices should anything "extra 
 special" occur. Telegraph boys were com- 
 ing up every now and again with threats, 
 messages, petitions and exhortations from 
 all parts of the country to the unfortunate 
 Home Secretary, who was striving to keep 
 his aching head cool as he went through 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 215 
 
 the voluminous evidence for the last time 
 and pondered over the more important let- 
 ters which ^'The Greater Jury" had con- 
 tributed to the obscuration of the problem. 
 Grodman's letter in that morning's paper 
 shook him most; under his scientific anal- 
 ysis the circumstantial chain seemed forged 
 of painted cardboard. Then the poor man 
 read the judge's summing up, and the 
 chain became tempered steel. The noise of 
 the crowd outside broke upon his ear in 
 his study like the roar of a distant ocean. 
 The more the rabble hooted him, the more 
 he essayed to hold scrupulously the scales 
 of life and death. And the crowd grew and 
 grew, as men came away from their work. 
 There were many that loved the man who 
 lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit of mad 
 revolt surged in their breasts. And the 
 sky was gray, and the bleak night deepened 
 and the shadow of the gallows crept on. 
 
 Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur 
 spread through the crowd, a vague whis- 
 per of no one knew what. Something had 
 happened. Somebody was coming. A sec- 
 ond later and one of the outskirts of the 
 
 15 
 
216 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 throng was agitated, and a convulsive cheer 
 went up from it, and was taken up infec- 
 tiously all along the street. The crowd 
 parted — a hansom dashed through the cen- 
 ter. "Grodman! Grodman!" shouted those 
 who recognized the occupant. ^^Grodman! 
 Hurrah!" Grodman was outwardly calm 
 and pale, but his eyes glittered; he waved 
 his hand encouragingly as the hansom 
 dashed up to the door, cleaving the turbu- 
 lent crowd as a canoe cleaves the v\^ater3. 
 Grodman sprang out, the constables at the 
 portal made way for him respectfully. He 
 knocked imperatively, the door was opened 
 cautiously; a boy rushed up and delivered 
 a telegram; Grodman forced his Vv^ay in, 
 gave his name, and insisted on seeing the 
 Home Secretary on a matter of life and 
 death. Those near the door heard his words 
 and cheered, and the crowd divined the 
 good omen, and the air throbbed witli can- 
 nonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang 
 in Grodman's ears as the door slammed be- 
 hind him. The reporters struggled to the 
 front. An excited knot of working men 
 pressed round the arrested hansom, they 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 217 
 
 took the horse out. A dozen enthusiasts 
 struggled for the honor of placing them- 
 selves between the shafts. And the crowd 
 awaited Grodman. 
 
218 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII . 
 
 Grodman was ushered into the conscien- 
 tious Minister's study. The doughty chief 
 of the agitation was, perhaps, the one man 
 who could not be denied. As he entered, 
 the Home Secretary's face seemed lit up 
 with relief. At a sign from his master, the 
 amanuensis who had brought in the last 
 telegram took it back with him into the 
 outer room where he worked. Needless to 
 say not a tithe of the Minister's correspond- 
 ence ever came under his own eyes. 
 
 "You have a valid reason for troubling 
 me, I suppose, Mr. Grodman?" said the 
 Home Secretary, almost cheerfully. "Of 
 course it is about Mortlake?" 
 
 "It is; and I have the best of all reasons." 
 
 "Take a seat. Proceed." 
 
 "Pray do not consider me impertinent, 
 but have you ever given any attention to 
 the science of evidence?" 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 219 
 
 "How do you mean?" asked the Home 
 Secretary, rather puzzled, adding, with a 
 melancholy smile, "I have had to lately. Of 
 course, I've never been a criminal lawyer, 
 like some of my predecessors. But I should 
 hardly speak of it as a science; I look upon 
 it as a question of common-sense." 
 
 "Pardon me, sir. It is the most subtle 
 and difficult of all the sciences. It is, in- 
 deed, rather the science of the sciences. 
 What is the whole of Inductive Logic, as 
 laid down, say, by Bacon and Mill, but an 
 attempt to appraise the value of evidence, 
 the said evidence being the trails left by the 
 Creator, so to speak? The Creator has — I 
 say it in all reverence — drawn a myriad 
 red herrings across the track, but the true 
 scientist refuses to be baffled by super- 
 ficial appearances in detecting the secrets 
 of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the 
 gross apparent fact, but the man of insight 
 knows that what lies on the surface does 
 lie." 
 
 "Very interesting, Mr. Grodman, but 
 really " 
 
 "Bear with me, sir. The science of evi- 
 ls 
 
220 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 dence being thus so extremely subtle, and 
 demanding the most acute and trained ob- 
 servation of facts, the most comprehensive 
 understanding of human psychology, ir. 
 naturally given over to professors who have 
 not the remotest idea that ^things are not 
 what they seem,' and that everything is 
 other than it appears; to professors, most 
 of whom, by their year-long devotion to the 
 shop-counter or the desk, have acquire<l 
 an intimate acquaintance with all the infin- 
 ite shades and complexities of things and 
 human nature. When twelve of these pro- 
 fessors are put in a box, it is called a jury. 
 When one of these professors is put in a box 
 by himself, he is called a witness. The re- 
 tailing of evidence — the observation of the 
 facts — is given over to people who go 
 through their lives without eyes; the ap- 
 preciation of evidence — the judging of 
 these facts — is surrendered to people who 
 may possibly be adepts in weighing out 
 pounds of sugar. Apart from their sheer 
 inability to fulfill either function — to ob- 
 serve, or to judge — their observation and 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 221 
 
 their judgment alike are vitiated by all 
 sorts of irrelevant prejudices." 
 
 "You are attacking trial by jury." 
 
 "Not necessarily. I am prepared to ac- 
 cept that scientifically, on the ground that, 
 as there are, as a rule, only two alternatives, 
 the balance of probability is slightly in 
 favor of the true decision being come to. 
 Then, in cases where experts like myself 
 have got up the evidence, the jury can be 
 made to see through trained eyes." 
 
 The Home Secretary tapped impatiently 
 with his foot. 
 
 "I can't listen to abstract theorizing," he 
 said. "Have you any fresh concrete evi- 
 dence?" 
 
 "Sir, everything depends on our getting 
 down to the root of the matter. What per- 
 centage of average evidence should you 
 think m thorough, plain, simple, unvar- 
 nished fact, ^the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but the truth' ?" 
 
 "Fifty?" said the Minister, humoring him 
 a little. 
 
 "Not five. I say nothing of lapses of mem- 
 ory, of inborn defects of observational pow- 
 
222 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 er — though the suspiciously precise recol- 
 lection of dates and events possessed by 
 ordinary witnesses in important trials tak- 
 ing place years after the occurrences in- 
 volved, is one of the most amazing things 
 in the curiosities of modern jurisprudence. 
 I defy you, sir, to tell me what you had 
 for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you 
 were saying and doing at five o'clock last 
 Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose life 
 does not run in mechanical grooves can do 
 anything of the sort; unless, of course, the 
 facts have been very impressive. But this 
 by the way. The great obstacle to vera- 
 cious observation is the element of prepos- 
 session in all vision. Has it ever struck you, 
 sir, that we never see anyone more than 
 once, if that? The first time we meet a 
 man we may possibly see him as he 
 is; the second time our vision is col- 
 ored and modified by the memory of the 
 first. Do our friends appear to us as 
 they appear to strangers? Do our rooms, 
 our furniture, our pipes strike our eye 
 as they would strike the eye of an out- 
 sider, looking on them for the first time? 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 223 
 
 Can a mother see her babe's ugliness, or a 
 lover his mistress' shortcomings, though 
 they stare everybody else in the face? Can 
 we see ourselves as others see us? No; 
 habit, prepossession changes all. The mind 
 is a large factor of every so-called external 
 fact. The eye sees, sometimes, what it 
 wishes to see, more often what it expects 
 to see. You follow me, sir?" 
 
 The Home Secretary nodded his head less 
 impatiently. He was beginning to be in- 
 terested. The hubbub from without broke 
 faintly upon their ears. 
 
 "To give you a definite example. Mr. 
 Wimp says that when I burst open the door 
 of Mr. Constant's room on the morning of 
 December 4th, and saw that the staple of 
 the bolt had been wrested by the pin from 
 the lintel, I jumped at once to the conclu- 
 sion that I had broken the bolt. Now I 
 admit that this was so, only in things like 
 this you do not seem to conclude, you jump 
 so fast that you see, or seem to. On the 
 other hand, when you see a standing ring 
 of fire produced by whirling a burning stick, 
 you do not believe in its continuous exist- 
 
224 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 ence. It is the same when witnessing a 
 legerdemain performance. Seeing is not 
 always believing, despite the proverb; but 
 believing is often seeing. It is not to 
 the point that in that little matter of the 
 door Wimp was as hopelessly and incur- 
 ably wrong as he has been in everything 
 all along. Though the door was securely 
 bolted, I confess that I should have seen 
 that I had broken the bolt in forcing the 
 door, even if it had been broken beforehand. 
 Never once since December 4th did this pos- 
 sibility occur to me, till Wimp with pervert- 
 ed ingenuity suggested it. If this is the 
 case with a trained observer, one moreover 
 fully conscious of this ineradicable ten- 
 dency of the human mind, how must it be 
 with an untrained observer?'' 
 
 "Come to the point, come to the point," 
 said the Home Secretary, putting out his 
 hand as if it itched to touch the bell on 
 the writing-table. 
 
 "Such as," went on Grodman imperturb- 
 ably, "such as — Mrs. Drabdump. That 
 worthy person is unable, by repeated vio- 
 lent knocking, to arouse her lodger who 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 225 
 
 yet desires to be aroused; she becomes 
 alarmed, she rushes across to get my assist- 
 ance; I burst open the door — what do you 
 think the good lady expected to see?" 
 
 "Mr. Constant murdered, I suppose,'- 
 murmured the Home Secretary, wonder- 
 ingly. 
 
 "Exactly. And so she saw it. And what 
 should you think was the condition of 
 Arthur Constant when the door yielded to 
 my violent exertions and flew open?" 
 
 "Why, was he not dead?" gasped the 
 Home Secretary, his heart fluttering vio- 
 lently. 
 
 "Dead? A young, healthy fellow like 
 that! When the door flew open Arthur 
 Constant was sleeping the sleep of the just. 
 It was a deep, a very deep sleep, of course, 
 else the blows at his door would long since 
 have awakened him. But all the while Mrs. 
 Drabdump's fancy was picturing her lodger 
 cold and stark the poor young fellow was 
 lying in bed in a nice warm sleep." 
 
 "You mean to say you found Arthur Con- 
 stant alive?" 
 
 "As you were last night." 
 
226 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 The minister was silent, striving con- 
 fusedly to take in the situation. Outside 
 the crowd was cheering again. It was 
 probably to pass the time. 
 
 "Then, when was he murdered?" 
 
 "Immediately afterward." 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 "Well, that is, if you will pardon me, not 
 a very intelligent question. Science and 
 common-sense are in accord for once. Try 
 the method of exhaustion. It must have 
 been either by Mrs. Drabdump or by my- 
 self." 
 
 "You mean to say that Mrs. Drab- 
 dump -!" 
 
 "Poor dear Mrs. Drabdump, you don't de- 
 serve this of your Home Secretary! The 
 idea of that good lady!" 
 
 "It was you!" 
 
 "Calm yourself, my dear Home Secretary. 
 There is nothing to be alarmed at. It was 
 a solitary experiment, and I intend it to 
 remain so." The noise without grew louder. 
 "Three cheers for Grodman! Hip, hip, hip, 
 hooray," fell faintly on their ears. 
 
 But the Minister, pallid and deeply 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 227 
 
 moved, touched the bell. The Home Sec- 
 retary's home secretary appeared. He 
 looked at the great man's agitated face with 
 suppressed surprise. 
 
 "Thank you for calling in your aman- 
 uensis," said Grodman. "I intended to 
 ask you to lend me his services. I suppose 
 he can write shorthand." 
 
 The minister nodded, speechless. 
 
 "That is well. I intend this statement 
 to form the basis of an appendix to the 
 twenty-fifth edition — sort of silver wedding 
 — of my book, ^Criminals I Have Caught.' 
 Mr. Denzil Cantercot, who, by the will I 
 have made to-day, is appointed my literary 
 executor, will have the task of working it 
 up with literary and dramatic touches after 
 the model of the other chapters of my book. 
 I have every confidence he will be able to 
 do me as much justice, from a literary point 
 of view, as you, sir, no doubt will from a 
 legal. I feel certain he will succeed in 
 catching the style of the other chapters to 
 perfection." 
 
 "Templeton," whispered the Home Secre- 
 tary, "this man may be a lunatic. The ef- 
 
228 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 fort to solve the Big Bow Mystery may have 
 addled his hiaim Still," he added aloud, 
 "it will be as well for you to take down his 
 statement in shorthand." 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Grodman, heart- 
 ily. "Ready, Mr. Templeton? Here goes. 
 My career till I left the Scotland- Yard De- 
 tective Department is known to all the 
 world. Is that too fast for you, Mr. Tem- 
 pleton? A little? Well, I'll go slower; but 
 pull me up if I forget to keep the brake on. 
 When I retired, I discovered that I was a 
 bachelor. But it was too late to marry. 
 Time hung on my hands. The preparation 
 of my book, ^Criminals I Have Caught,' kept 
 me occupied for some months. When it 
 was published I had nothing more to do but 
 think. I had plenty of money, and it was 
 safely invested; there was no call for spec- 
 ulation. The future was meaningless to 
 me; I regretted I had not elected to die in 
 harness. As idle old men must, I lived in 
 the past. I went over and over again my 
 ancient exploits; I re-read my book. And 
 as I thought and thought, away from the 
 excitement of the actual hunt, and seeing 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 229 
 
 the facts in a truer perspective, so it grew 
 daily clearer to me that criminals were 
 more fools than rogues. Every crime I had 
 traced, however cleverly perpetrated, was 
 from the point of view of penetrability a 
 weak failure. Traces and trails w^ere left 
 on all sides — ragged edges, rough-hewn cor- 
 ners; in short, the job was botched, artistic 
 completeness unattained. To the vulgar, 
 my feats might seem marvelous — the aver- 
 age man is mystified to grasp how you de- 
 tect the letter ^eMn a simple cryptogram — 
 to myself they were as commonplace as the 
 crimes they unveiled. To me now, with my 
 lifelong study of the science of evidence, it 
 seemed possible to commit not merely one, 
 but a thousand crimes that should be abso- 
 lutely undiscoverable. And yet criminals 
 would go on sinning, and giving themselves 
 away, in the same old grooves — no origi- 
 nality, no dash, no individual insight, no 
 fresh conception ! One would imagine there 
 were an Academy of crime with forty thou- 
 sand armchairs. And gradually, as I pon- 
 dered and brooded over the thought, there 
 came upon me the desire to commit a crime 
 
230 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 that should baffle detection. I could in. 
 vent hundreds of such crimes, and please 
 myself by imagining them done; but would 
 they really work out in practice? Evident- 
 ly the sole performer of my experiment 
 must be myself; the subject — whom or 
 what? Accident should determine. I 
 itched to commence with murder — to tackle 
 the stiffest problems first, and I burned to 
 startle and baffle the world — especially the 
 world of which I had ceased to be. Out- 
 wardly I was calm, and spoke to the people 
 about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire 
 with a consuming scientific passion. I 
 sported with my pet theories, and fitted 
 them mentally on everyone I met. Every 
 friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped 
 with, I was plotting how to murder with- 
 out leaving a clue. There is not one of my 
 friends or acquaintances I have not done 
 away with in thought. There is no public 
 man — have no fear, my dear Home Secre- 
 tary — I have not planned to assassinate 
 secretly, mysteriously, unintelligibly, un- 
 discoverably. Ah, how I could give the 
 stock criminals points — with their second- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 231 
 
 hand motives, their conventional concep- 
 tions, their commonplace details, their lack 
 of artistic feeling and restraint. 
 
 "The late Arthur Constant came to live 
 nearly opposite me. I cultivated his ac- 
 quaintance — he was a lovable young fel- 
 low, an excellent subject for experiment. I 
 do not know when I have ever taken to a 
 man more. From the moment I first set 
 eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy 
 between us. We were drawn to each other. 
 I felt instinctively he would be the man. 
 I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically 
 of the Brotherhood of Man — I, who knew 
 the brotherhood of man was to the ape, the 
 serpent, and the tiger — and he seemed to 
 find a pleasure in stealing a moment's chat 
 with me from his engrossing self-appointed 
 duties. It is a pity humanity should have 
 been robbed of so valuable a life. But it 
 had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night 
 of December 3d he came to me. Naturally 
 I said nothing about this visit at the inquest 
 or the trial. His object was to consult me 
 mysteriously about some girl. He said he 
 had privately lent her money — which she 
 
 16 
 
232 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 was to repay at her convenieuce. What the 
 money was for he did not know, except that 
 it was somehow connected with an act of 
 abnegation in which he had vaguely en- 
 couraged her. The girl had since disap- 
 peared, and he was in distress about her. 
 He would not tell me who it was — of course 
 now, sir, you know as well as I it was Jessie 
 Dymond — but asked for advice as to how 
 to set about finding her. He mentioned 
 that Mortlake was leaving for Devonport 
 by the first train on the next day. Of old 
 I should have connected these two facts 
 and sought the thread; now, as he spoke, 
 all my thoughts were dyed red. He was suf- 
 fering perceptibly from toothache, and in 
 answer to my sympathetic inquiries told me 
 it had been allowing him very little sleep. 
 Everything combined to invite the trial of 
 one of my favorite theories. I spoke to him 
 in a fatherly way, and when I had tendered 
 some vague advice about the girl, and made 
 him promise to secure a night's rest (before 
 he faced the arduous tram-men's meeting 
 in the morning) by taking a sleeping- 
 draught, I gave him some sulfonal in a 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 233 
 
 phial. It is a new drug, which produces 
 protracted sleep without disturbing the di- 
 gestion, and which I use myself. lie prom- 
 ised faithfully to take the draught; and I 
 also exhorted him earnestly to bolt and bar 
 and lock himself in so as to stop up every 
 chink or aperture by which the cold air of 
 the winter^s night might creep into the 
 room. I remonstrated with him on the care- 
 less manner he treated his body, and he 
 laughed in his good-humored, gentle way, 
 and promised to obey me in all things. And 
 he did. That Mrs. Drabdump, failing to 
 rouse him, would cry 'Murder!' I took for 
 certain. She is built that way. As even 
 Sir Charles Brown-Harland remarked, she 
 habitually takes her prepossessions for 
 facts, her inferences for observations. She 
 forecasts the future in gray. Most women 
 of Mrs. Drabdump's class would have be- 
 haved as she did. She happened to be a 
 peculiarly favorable specimen for working 
 on by 'suggestion,' but I would have under- 
 taken to produce the same effect on almost 
 any woman under similar conditions. The 
 only uncertain link in the chain was: 
 
234 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 Would Mrs. Drabdamp rush across to get 
 me to break open the door? Women al- 
 ways rush for a man. I was well-nigh the 
 nearest, and certainly the most authorita- 
 tive man in the street, and I took it for 
 granted she would.'' 
 
 "But suppose she hadn't?" the Home Sec- 
 retary could not help asking. 
 
 "Then the murder wouldn't have hap- 
 pened, that's all. In due course Arthur Con- 
 stant would have awoke, or somebody else 
 breaking open the door would have found 
 him sleeping; no harm done, nobody any 
 the wiser. I could hardly sleep myself that 
 night. The thought of the extraordinary 
 crime I was about to commit — a burning 
 curiosity to know whether Wimp would de- 
 tect the modus operandi — the prospect of 
 sharing the feelings of murderers with 
 whom I had been in contact all my life with- 
 out being in touch with the terrible joys of 
 their inner life — the fear lest I should be too 
 fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drabdump's knock 
 — these things agitated me and disturbed 
 my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning 
 every detail of poor Constant's end. The 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 235 
 
 hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on 
 toward the misty dawn. I was racked with 
 suspense. Was I to be disappointed after 
 all? At last the welcome sound came — 
 the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of 
 that knock are yet in my ear. *Come over 
 and kill hiniT I put my night-capped head 
 out of the window and told her to wait for 
 me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and 
 went across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke 
 open the door of the bedroom in which 
 Arthur Constant lay sleeping, his head rest- 
 ing on his hands, I cried, ^My God!' as if I 
 saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood 
 swam before Mrs. Drabdump's eyes. She 
 cowered back, for an instant (I divined 
 rather than saw the action) she shut off the 
 dreaded sight with her hands. In that in- 
 stant I had made my cut — precisely, scien- 
 tifically — made so deep a cut and drew out 
 the weapon so sharply that there was scarce 
 a drop of blood on it; then there came from 
 the throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drab- 
 dump, conscious only of the horrid gash, 
 saw but vaguely. I covered up the face 
 quickly with a handkerchief to hide any 
 
 16 
 
236 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 convulsive distortion. But as the medical 
 evidence (in this detail accurate) testified, 
 death was instantaneous. I pocketed the 
 razor and the empty sulfoual phial. With 
 a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to watch me, 
 I could do anything I pleased. I got her 
 to draw my attention to the fact that both 
 the windows were fastened. Some fool, by 
 the by, thought there was a discrepancy 
 in the evidence because the police found 
 only one window fastened, forgetting that^ 
 in my innocence, I took care not to fasten 
 the window I had opened to call for aid. 
 Naturally I did not call for aid before a 
 considerable time had elapsed. There was 
 Mrs. Drabdump to quiet, and the excuse of 
 making notes — as an old hand. My object 
 was to gain time. I wanted the body to be 
 fairly cold and stiff before being discov- 
 ered, though there was not much danger 
 here; for, as you saw by the medical evi- 
 dence, there is no telling the time of death 
 to an hour or two. The frank way in which 
 I said the death was very recent disarmed 
 all suspicion, and even Dr. Robinson was 
 unconsciously worked upon, in adjudging 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 237 
 
 the time of death, by the knowledge (query 
 here, Mr. Templeton) that it had preceded 
 my advent on the scene. 
 
 "Before leaving Mrs. Drabdump there 
 is just one point I should like to say a word 
 about. You have listened so patiently, sir, 
 to my lectures on the science of sciences 
 that you will not refuse to hear the last. 
 A good deal of importance has been at- 
 tached to Mrs. Drabdump's oversleeping 
 herself by half an hour. It happens that 
 this (like the innocent fog which has also 
 been made responsible for much) is a purely 
 accidental and irrelevant circumstance. 
 In all works on inductive logic it is thor- 
 oughly recognized that only some of the cir- 
 cumstances of a phenomenon are of its 
 essence and causally interconnected; there 
 is always a certain proportion of hetero- 
 geneous accompaniments which have no 
 intimate relation whatever with the phe- 
 nomenon. Yet so crude is as yet the 
 comprehension of the science of evidence, 
 that every feature of the phenomenon 
 under investigation is made equally im- 
 portant, and sought to be linked with the 
 
238 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 chain of evidence. To attempt to explain 
 everything is always the mark of the tyro. 
 The fog and Mrs. Drabdump's oversleeping 
 herself were mere accidents. There are 
 always these irrelevant accompaniments, 
 and the true scientist allows for this 
 element of (so to speak) chemically unre- 
 lated detail. Even I never counted on the 
 unfortunate series of accidental phenomena 
 which have led to Mortlake's implication 
 in a network of suspicion. On the other 
 hand, the fact that my servant Jane, who 
 usually goes about ten, left a few minutes 
 earlier on the night of December 3d, so 
 that she didn't know of Constant's visit, 
 was a relevant accident. In fact, just as 
 the art of the artist or the editor consists 
 largely in knowing what to leave out, so 
 does the art of the scientific detector of 
 crime consist in knowing what details to 
 ignore. In short, to explain everything is 
 to explain too much. And too much is 
 worse than too little. To return to my 
 experiment. My success exceeded my 
 wildest dreams. None had an inkling of 
 the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 239 
 
 Mystery teased the acutest miuds in Eu- 
 rope and the civilized world. That a man 
 could have been murdered in a thoroughly 
 inaccessible room savored of the ages of 
 magic. The redoubtable Wimp, who had 
 been blazoned as my successor, fell back on 
 the theory of suicide. The mystery would 
 have slept till my death, but — I fear — for 
 my own ingenuity. I tried to stand out- 
 side myself, and to look at the crime with 
 the eyes of another, or of my old self. I 
 found the work of art so perfect as to 
 leave only one sublimely simple solution. 
 The very terms of the problem were so in- 
 conceivable that, had I not been the mur- 
 derer, I should have suspected myself, in 
 conjunction of course with Mrs. Drabdump. 
 The first persons to enter the room would 
 have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once 
 (in a disguised hand and over the signature 
 of ^One Who Looks Through His Own Spec- 
 tacles') to the Tell Mell Press' to suggest 
 this. By associating myself thus with Mrs. 
 Drabdump I made it difficult for people to 
 dissociate the two who entered the room 
 together. To dash a half-truth in the 
 
240 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 world's eyes is the surest way of blinding it 
 altogether. This letter of mine 1 contra- 
 dicted myself (in my own name) the next 
 day, and in the course of the long letter 
 which I was tempted to write I adduced 
 fresh evidence against the theory of sui- 
 cide. I was disgusted with the open ver- 
 dict, and wanted men to be up and doing 
 and trying to find me out. I enjoyed the 
 hunt more. Unfortunately, Wimp, set on 
 the chase again by my own letter, by dint 
 of persistent blundering, blundered into a 
 track which — by a devilish tissue of coin- 
 cidences I had neither foreseen nor dreamt 
 of — seemed to the world the true. Mortlake 
 was arrested and condemned. Wimp 
 had apparently crowned his reputation. 
 This was too much. I had taken all this 
 trouble merely to put a feather in Wimp's 
 cap, whereas I had expected to shake his 
 reputation by it. It was bad enough that 
 an innocent man should suffer; but that 
 Wimp should achieve a reputation he did 
 not deserve, and overshadow all his pre- 
 decessors by dint of a colossal mistake, 
 this seemed to me intolerable. I have 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 241 
 
 moved heaven Jind earth to get the verdict 
 set aside and to save the prisoner; I have 
 exposed the weakness of the evidence; I 
 have had the world searched for the miss- 
 ing girl; I have petitioned and agitated. In 
 vain. I have failed. Now I play my last 
 card. As the overweening Wimp conld 
 not be allowed to go down to posterity 
 as the solver of this terrible mystery, I de- 
 cided that the condemned man might just 
 as well profit by his exposure. That is the 
 reason I make the exposure to-night, before 
 it is too late to save Mortlake." 
 
 "So that is the reason?" said the Home 
 Secretary with a suspicion of mockery in 
 his tones. 
 
 "The sole reason." 
 
 Even as he spoke a deeper roar than 
 ever penetrated the study. The crowd had 
 again started cheering. Impatient as the 
 watchers were, they felt that no news was 
 good news. The longer the intervievv^ ac- 
 corded by the Home Secretary to the chair- 
 man of the Defense Committee, the greater 
 the hope his obduracy was melting. Tlie 
 idol of the people would be saved, and 
 
242 THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 
 
 "Grodman" and "Tom Mortlake" were 
 mingled in the exultant plaudits. 
 
 "Templeton," said the Minister, "have 
 you got down every word of Mr. Grod- 
 man's confession?" 
 
 "Every word, sir." 
 
 "Then bring in the cable you received 
 just as Mr. Grodman entered the house." 
 
 Templeton went back into the outer 
 room and brought back the cablegram that 
 had been lying on the Minister's writing- 
 table when Grodman came in. The Home 
 Secretary silently handed it to his visitor. 
 It was from the Chief of Police of Mel- 
 bourne, announcing that Jessie Dymond 
 had just arrived in that city in a sailing 
 vessel, ignorant of all that had occurred, 
 and had been immediately dispatched back 
 to England, having made a statement en- 
 tirely corroborating the theory of the de- 
 fense. 
 
 "Pending further inquiries into this," 
 said the Home Secretary, not without 
 appreciation of the grim humor of the 
 situation as he glanced at Grodmau's 
 ashen cheeks, "I have reprieved the pris- 
 
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY. 243 
 
 oner. Mr. Templeton was about to dis- 
 patch the messenger to the governor of 
 Newgate as you entered this room. Mr. 
 Wimp's card-castle would have tumbled to 
 pieces without your assistance. Your still 
 undiscoverable crime would have shaken 
 his reputation as you intended." 
 
 A sudden explosion shook the room and 
 blent with the cheers of the populace. 
 Grodman had shot himself — very scien- 
 tifically — in the heart. He fell at the Home 
 Secretary's feet, stone dead. 
 
 Some of the workingmen who had been 
 standing waiting by the shafts of the han- 
 som helped to bear the stretcher. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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