Detection by Gaslight Read online

  “That is very interesting,” said I. “And now I see the object of your researches. You hope to get a hint as to the locality where the button has been lying.”

  “I hoped, as you say, to get a hint, but I have succeeded beyond my expectations. I have been able to fix the locality exactly.”

  “Have you really?” I exclaimed. “How on earth did you manage that?”

  “By a very singular chance,” he replied. “It happens that phonolite occurs in two places only in the neighbourhood of the British Isles. One is inland and may be disregarded. The other is the Wolf Rock.”

  “The rock of which Philip Rodney was speaking?”

  “Yes. He said, you remember, that he was afraid that the yacht might drift down on it in the fog. Well, this Wolf Rock is a very remarkable structure. It is what is called a ‘volcanic neck,’ that is, it is a mass of altered lava that once filled the funnel of a volcano. The volcano has disappeared, but this cast of the funnel remains standing up from the bottom of the sea like a great column. It is a single mass of phonolite, and thus entirely different in composition from the seabed around or anywhere near these islands. But, of course, immediately at its base, the sea-bottom must be covered with decomposed fragments which have fallen from its sides, and it is from these fragments that our Terebella has built its tube. So, you see, we can fix the exact locality in which that button has been lying all the months that the tube was building, and we now have a point of departure for fresh investigations.”

  “But,” I said, “this is a very significant discovery, Thorndyke. Shall you tell Rodney?”

  “Certainly I shall. But there are one or two questions that I shall ask him first. I have sent him a note inviting him to drop in to-night with his brother, so we had better run round to the club and get some dinner. I said nine o’clock.”

  It was a quarter to nine when we had finished dinner, and ten minutes later we were back in our chambers. Thorndyke made up the fire, placed the chairs hospitably round the hearth, and laid on the table the notes that he had taken at the late interview. Then the Treasury clock struck nine, and within less than a minute our two guests arrived.

  “I should apologise,” said Thorndyke, as we shook hands, “for my rather peremptory message, but I thought it best to waste no time.”

  “You certainly have wasted no time,” said Rodney, “if you have already extracted its history from the button. Do you keep a tame medium on the premises, or are you a clairvoyant yourself?”

  “There is our medium,” replied Thorndyke, indicating the microscope standing on a side-table under its bell glass. “The man who uses it becomes to some extent a clairvoyant. But I should like to ask you one or two questions if I may.”

  Rodney made no secret of his disappointment. “We had hoped,” said he, “to hear answers rather than questions. However, as you please.”

  “Then,” said Thorndyke, quite unmoved by Rodney’s manner, “I will proceed; and I will begin with the yacht in which Purcell and Varney travelled from Sennen to Penzance. I understand that the yacht belongs to you and was lent by you to these two men?”

  Rodney nodded, and Thorndyke then asked: “Has the yacht ever been out of your custody on any other occasion?”

  “No,” replied Rodney, “excepting on this occasion, one or both of us have always been on board.”

  Thorndyke made a note of the answer and proceeded: “When you resumed possession of the yacht, did you find her in all respects as you had left her?”

  “My dear sir,” Rodney exclaimed impatiently, “may I remind you that we are inquiring—if we are inquiring about anything—into the disappearance of a man who was seen to go ashore from this yacht and who certainly never came on board again? The yacht is out of it altogether.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Thorndyke, “I should be glad if you would answer my question.”

  “Oh, very well,” Rodney replied irritably. “Then we found her substantially as we had left her.”

  “Meaning by ‘substantially’?——”

  “Well, they had had to rig a new jib halyard. The old one had parted.”

  “Did you find the old one on board?”

  “Yes; in two pieces, of course.”

  “Was the whole of it there?”

  “I suppose so. We never measured the pieces. But really, sir, these questions seem extraordinarily irrelevant.”

  “They are not,” said Thorndyke. “You will see that presently. I want to know if you missed any rope, cordage, or chain.”

  Here Philip interposed. “There was some spun-yarn missing. They opened a new ball and used up several yards. I meant to ask Varney what they used it for.”

  Thorndyke jotted down a note and asked: “Was there any of the ironwork missing? Any anchor, chain, or any other heavy object?”

  Rodney shook his head impatiently, but again Philip broke in.

  “You are forgetting the ballast-weight, Jack. You see,” he continued, addressing Thorndyke, “the yacht is ballasted with half-hundredweights, and, when we came to take out the ballast to lay her up for the winter, we found one of the weights missing. I have no idea when it disappeared, but there was certainly one short, and neither of us had taken it out.”

  “Can you,” asked Thorndyke, “fix any date on which all the ballast-weights were in place?”

  “Yes, I think I can. A few days before Purcell went to Penzance we beached the yacht—she is only a little boat—to give her a scrape. Of course, we had to take out the ballast, and when we launched her again I helped to put it back. I am certain all the weights were there then.”

  Here Jack Rodney, who had been listening with ill-concealed impatience, remarked:

  “This is all very interesting, sir, but I cannot conceive what bearing it has on the movements of Purcell after he left the yacht.”

  “It has a most direct and important bearing,” said Thorndyke. “Perhaps I had better explain before we go any further. Let me begin by pointing out that this button has been lying for many months at the bottom of the sea at a depth of not less than ten fathoms. That is proved by the worm-tube which has been built on it. Now, as this button is a waterproofed cork, it could not have sunk by itself; it has been sunk by some body to which it was attached, and there is evidence that that body was a very heavy one.”

  “What evidence is there of that?” asked Rodney.

  “There is the fact that it has been lying continuously in one place. A body of moderate weight, as you know, moves about the sea-bottom impelled by currents and tide-streams, but this button has been lying unmoved in one place.”

  “Indeed,” said Rodney with manifest scepticism. “Perhaps you can point out the spot where it has been lying.”

  “I can,” Thorndyke replied. “That button, Mr. Rodney, has been lying all these months at the base of the Wolf Rock.”

  The two brothers started very perceptibly. They stared at Thorndyke, they looked at one another, and then the lawyer challenged the statement.

  “You make this assertion very confidently,” he said. “Can you give us any evidence to support it?”

  Thorndyke’s reply was to produce the button, the section, the test-specimens, the microscope, and the geological chart. In great detail, and with his incomparable lucidity, he assembled the facts, and explained their connection, evolving the unavoidable conclusion.

  The different effect of the demonstration on the two men interested me greatly. To the lawyer, accustomed to dealing with verbal and documentary evidence, it manifestly appeared as a far-fetched, rather fantastic argument, ingenious, amusing, and entirely unconvincing. On Philip, the doctor, it made a profound impression. Accustomed to acting on inferences from facts of his own observing, he gave full weight to each item of evidence, and I could see that his mind was already stretching out to the, as yet unstated, corollaries.

  The lawyer was the first to speak. “What inference,” he asked, “do you wish us to draw from this very ingenious theory of yours?”

&n
bsp; “The inference,” Thorndyke replied impassively, “I leave to you; but perhaps it would help you if I recapitulate the facts.”

  “Perhaps it would,” said Rodney.

  “Then,” said Thorndyke, “I will take them in order. This is the case of a man who was seen to start on a voyage for a given destination in company with one other person. His start out to sea was witnessed by a number of persons. From that moment he was never seen again by any person excepting his one companion. He is said to have reached his destination, but his arrival there rests upon the unsupported verbal testimony of one person, the said companion. Thereafter he vanished utterly, and since then has made no sign of being alive, although there are several persons with whom he could have safely communicated.

  “Some eight months later a portion of this man’s clothing is found. It bears evidence of having been lying at the bottom of the sea for many months, so that it must have sunk to its resting place within a very short time of the man’s disappearance. The place where it has been lying is one over, or near, which the man must have sailed in the yacht. It has been moored to the bottom by some very heavy object; and a very heavy object has disappeared from the yacht. That heavy object had apparently not disappeared when the yacht started, and was not seen on the yacht afterwards. The evidence goes to show that the disappearance of that object coincided in time with the disappearance of the man; and a quantity of cordage disappeared, certainly, on that day. Those are the facts in our possession at present, Mr. Rodney, and I think the inference emerges automatically.”

  There was a brief silence, during which the two brothers cogitated profoundly and with very disturbed expressions. Then Rodney spoke.

  “I am bound to admit, Dr. Thorndyke, that, as a scheme of circumstantial evidence, this is extremely ingenious and complete. It is impossible to mistake your meaning. But you would hardly expect us to charge a highly respectable gentleman of our acquaintance with having murdered his friend and made away with the body, on a—well—a rather far-fetched theory.”

  “Certainly not,” replied Thorndyke. “But, on the other hand, with this body of circumstantial evidence before us, it is clearly imperative that some further investigations should be made before we speak of the matter to any human soul.”

  Rodney agreed somewhat grudgingly. “What do you suggest?” he asked.

  “I suggest that we thoroughly overhaul the yacht in the first place. Where is she now?”

  “Under a tarpaulin in a yard at Battersea. The gear and stores are in a disused workshop in the yard.”

  “When could we look over her?”

  “To-morrow morning, if you like,” said Rodney.

  “Very well,” said Thorndyke. “We will call for you at nine, if that will suit.”

  It suited perfectly, and the arrangement was accordingly made. A few minutes later the two brothers took their leave, but as they were shaking hands, Philip said suddenly:

  “There is one little matter that occurs to me. I have only just remembered it, and I don’t suppose it is of any consequence, but it is as well to mention everything. You remember my brother saying that one of the jib halyards broke that day?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, of course, the jib came down and went partly overboard. Now, the next time I hoisted the sail, I noticed a small stain on it; a greenish stain like that of mud, only it wouldn’t wash out, and it is there still. I meant to ask Varney about it. Stains of that kind on the jib usually come from a bit of mud on the fluke of the anchor, but the anchor was quite clean when I examined it, and besides, it hadn’t been down on that day. I thought I’d better tell you about it.”

  “I’m glad you did,” said Thorndyke. “We will have a look at that stain to-morrow. Good-night.” Once more he shook hands, and then, reentering the room, stood for quite a long time with his back to the fire, thoughtfully examining the toes of his boots.

  We started forth next morning for our rendezvous considerably earlier than seemed necessary. But I made no comment, for Thorndyke was in that state of extreme taciturnity which characterised him whenever he was engaged on an absorbing case with an insufficiency of evidence. I knew that he was turning over and over the facts that he had, and searching for new openings; but I had no clue to the trend of his thoughts until, passing the gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, he walked briskly up Chancery Lane into Holborn, and finally halted outside a wholesale druggist’s.

  “I shan’t be more than a few minutes,” said he; “are you coming in?”

  I was, most emphatically. Questions were forbidden at this stage, but there was no harm in keeping one’s ears open; and when I heard his order I was the richer by a distinct clue to his next movements. Tincture of Guiacum and Ozonic Ether formed a familiar combination, and the size of the bottles indicated the field of investigation.

  We found the brothers waiting for us at Lincoln’s Inn. They both looked rather hard at the parcel that I was now carrying, and especially at Thorndyke’s green canvas-covered research case; but they made no comment, and we set forth at once on the rather awkward cross-country journey to Battersea. Very little was said on the way, but I noticed that both men took our quest more seriously than I had expected, and I judged that they had been talking the case over.

  Our journey terminated at a large wooden gate on which Rodney knocked loudly with his stick; whereupon a wicket was opened, and, after a few words of explanation, we passed through into a large yard. Crossing this, we came to a wharf, beyond which was a small stretch of unreclaimed shore, and here, drawn well above high-water mark, a small, double-ended yacht stood on chocks under a tarpaulin cover.

  “This is the yacht,” said Rodney. “The gear and loose fittings are stored in the workshop behind us. Which will you see first?”

  “Let us look at the gear,” said Thorndyke, and we turned to the disused workshop into which Rodney admitted us with a key from his pocket. I looked curiously about the long, narrow interior with its prosaic contents, so little suggestive of tragedy or romance. Overhead the yacht’s spars rested on the tie-beams, from which hung bunches of blocks; on the floor a long row of neatly-painted half-hundredweights, a pile of chain-cable, two anchors, a stove, and other oddments such as water breakers, buckets, mops, etc., and on the long benches at the side, folded sails, locker cushions, side-light lanterns, the binnacle, the cabin lamp, and other more delicate fittings. Thorndyke, too, glanced round inquisitively, and, depositing his case on the bench, asked, “Have you still got the broken jib halyard of which you were telling me?”

  “Yes,” said Rodney, “it is here under the bench.” He drew out a coil of rope, and flinging it on the floor, began to uncoil it, when it separated into two lengths.

  “Which are the broken ends?” Thorndyke asked.

  “It broke near the middle,” said Rodney, “where it chafed on the cleat when the sail was hoisted. This is the one end, you see, frayed out like a brush in breaking, and the other——” He picked up the second half and, passing it rapidly through his hands, held up the end. He did not finish the sentence, but stood with a frown of surprise staring at the rope in his hands.

  “This is queer,” he said, after a pause, “The broken end has been cut off. Did you cut it off, Phil?”

  “No,” replied Philip. “It is just as I took it from the locker, where, I suppose, you or Varney stowed it.”

  “The question is,” said Thorndyke, “how much has it been cut off? Do you know the original length of the rope?”

  “Yes. Forty-two feet. It is not down in the inventory, but I remember working it out. Let us see how much there is here.”

  He laid the two lengths of rope along the floor and we measured them with Thorndyke’s spring tape. The combined length was exactly thirty-one feet.

  “So,” said Thorndyke, “there are eleven feet missing, without allowing for the lengthening of the rope by stretching. That is a very important fact.”

  “What made you suspect that part of the halyard might be missing as wel
l as the spunyarn?” Philip asked.

  “I did not think,” replied Thorndyke, “that a yachtsman would use spunyarn to lash a half-handredweight to a corpse. I suspected that the spunyarn was used for something else. By the way, I see you have a revolver there. Was that on board at the time?”

  “Yes,” said Rodney. “It was hanging on the cabin bulkhead. Be careful. I don’t think it has been unloaded.”

  Thorndyke opened the breech of the revolver, and dropping the cartridges into his hand, peered down the barrel and into each chamber separately.

  “It is quite clean inside,” he remarked. Then, glancing at the ammunition in his hand, “I notice,” said he, “that these cartridges are not all alike. There is one Curtis and Harvey, and five Eleys.”

  Philip looked with a distinctly startled expression at the little heap of cartridges in Thorndyke’s hand, and picking out the odd one, examined it with knitted brows.

  “When did you fire the revolver last, Jack?” he asked, looking up at his brother.

  “On the day when we potted at those champagne bottles,” was the reply.

  Philip raised his eyebrows. “Then,” said he, “this is a very remarkable affair. I distinctly remember on that occasion, when we had sunk all the bottles, reloading the revolver with Eleys, and that there were then three cartridges left over in the bag. When I had loaded I opened the new box of Curtis and Harvey’s, upped them into the bag and threw the box overboard.”

  “Did you clean the revolver?” asked Thorndyke.

  “No, I didn’t. I mean to do it later, but forgot to.”

  “But,” said Thorndyke, “it has undoubtedly been cleaned, and very thoroughly. Shall we check the cartridges in the bag? There ought to be forty-nine Curtis and Harvey’s and three Eley’s if what you tell us is correct.”

  Philip searched among the raffle on the bench and produced a small linen bag. Untying the string, he shot out on the bench a heap of cartridges which he counted one by one. There were fifty-two in all, and three of them were Eley’s.