THE WAGER.
"What I mean to assert," said Ralph Sturgis, with quiet conviction, "is
that every crime is its own historian; that all its minutest details
are written in circumstantial evidence as completely as an eye-witness
could see them,--aye, more fully and more truly than they could be
described by the criminal himself."
The reporter was a man of about thirty, whose regular features bore
the unmistakable stamp of intelligence and refinement. In repose, they
wore an habitual expression of introspective concentration, which might
have led a careless observer to class Ralph Sturgis in the category
of aimless dreamers. But a single flash of the piercing gray eyes
generally sufficed to dispel any such impression; and told of keen
perception and underlying power. The mouth was firm and kind; the
bearing that of a gentleman and a man of education.
"But," objected the host, "you surely do not mean to express a belief
in the infallibility of circumstantial evidence?"
"Why not?"
"Because you must know as well as any one how misleading uncorroborated
circumstantial evidence is. I do not forget what remarkable results
you have often accomplished for the _Daily Tempest_ in detecting and
following up clues to which the official detectives were blind. But,
frankly, were not your conclusions usually the result of lucky guesses,
which would have remained comparatively useless as evidence had they
not been subsequently proved correct by direct testimony?"
"Let me reply to your question by another, Sprague," answered Sturgis.
"When you draw a check, does the paying teller at the bank require
the testimony of witnesses to your signature before admitting its
genuineness?"
"No; of course not."
"Precisely. He probably knows the signature of Harvey M. Sprague, the
depositor, better than he does the face of Sprague, the artist. And
yet the evidence here is purely circumstantial. I know of at least
one recent instance in which the officials of a New York bank placed
their implicit reliance upon circumstantial evidence of this sort,
in spite of the direct testimony of the depositor, who was willing
to acknowledge the genuineness of a check to which his name had been
forged."
"I suppose you refer to the Forsyth case," said Sprague; "but you must
remember that Colonel Forsyth was actuated by the desire to shield the
forger, who was his own scapegrace son."
"That is just the point," replied Sturgis; "another witness will be
biased by his interests or prejudices, blinded by jealousy, love or
hatred, or handicapped by overzealousness, stupidity, lack of memory,
or what not. Circumstantial evidence is always impartial, truthful,
absolute. When the geologist reads the history of the earth, as it
is written in its crust; when a Kepler or a Newton formulates the
immutable laws of the universe, as they are recorded in the motions of
the heavenly bodies, they draw their conclusions from evidence which is
entirely circumstantial."
"Yes; but you forget that science has often been mistaken in its
conclusions," interrupted Sprague, "so that it has constantly been
necessary to alter theories to fit newly acquired or better understood
facts."
"Granted," rejoined Sturgis, "but that is because the interpreters
of the evidence are fallible; not because the evidence itself is
incomplete. The same cause will always produce the same effect;
the same chain of events will invariably terminate in one and the
same catastrophe. The apparent deviations from this law are due to
unrecognized differences in the producing causes, to additional or
missing links in the chain of evidence. Therefore I hold that a
criminal, however clever he may be, leaves behind him a complete trace
of his every act, from which his crime may be reconstructed with
absolute certainty by a competent detective."
"In short, 'Murder will out!'" said a man who had been a silent
listener to the conversation up to this point. He spoke with a quiet
smile, which barely escaped being a polite sneer.
Sturgis's keen eyes met his interlocutor's as he replied gravely:
"I should hardly care to make so sweeping an affirmation, Doctor
Murdock. I have merely stated that the history of every crime is
indelibly written in tangible evidence. The writing is on the wall,
but of course a blind man cannot see it, nor can an illiterate man
understand it. Every event, however trivial, owes its occurrence to a
natural cause, and leaves its indelible impress upon nature. The Indian
on the trail reads with an experienced eye the story of his enemy's
passage, as it has been recorded in trodden turf and broken twigs;
while the bloodhound follows, with unerring judgment, a still surer
though less tangible trail. The latter's quarry has left behind, at
every step, an invisible, imponderable, and yet unmistakable part of
itself. Perhaps my meaning can be made clear by an illustration. When a
photographer in his dark room takes an exposed plate from his camera,
it is apparently a blank; but in reality there is upon this plate the
minutely detailed history of an event, which, in proper hands, can
be brought before the least competent of observers as irrefutable
evidence. Here, the actinic rays of the sunlight are the authors of the
evidence; but every natural force, in one way or another, conspires
with the detective to run the criminal to earth."
"Unless," suggested Murdock, "the ability happens to be on the side of
the quarry; in which case, the conspiracy of Nature's forces turns
against the hunter."
"Ah!" retorted the reporter, "the game is not an equal one. The dice
are loaded. For while on the one hand, the detective, if he falls into
an error, has a lifetime in which to correct it, any misstep on the
part of the criminal is fatal. And who is infallible?"
"Not the detective, at any rate," answered Murdock with suave irony.
"It has always seemed to me that the halo which has been conferred upon
him, chiefly through the efforts of imaginative writers of sensational
fiction, is entirely undeserved. In the first place, most of the
crimes of which we hear are committed either by men of a low order of
intelligence or else by madmen, in which latter category I include all
criminals acting under the impulse of any of the passions--hatred,
love, jealousy, anger. And then, while the detective takes good care
that his successes shall be proclaimed from the house-tops, he is
equally careful to smother all accounts, or to suppress every detail,
of his failures, whenever there is any possibility of so doing. You can
cite, I know, plenty of cases in which, even after the lapse of years,
the crime has been discovered and the criminal has been confronted
with his guilt, but----"
"In my opinion," piped the shrill voice of an elderly man of clerical
aspect, "conscience is the surest detective, after all."
"Conscience!" retorted Murdock calmly; "the word is a euphemism. Man
gives the name of conscience to his fear of discovery and punishment.
There is no such thing as conscience in the criminal who has absolute
confidence in his power to escape detection."
"But where is the man who can have that superb confidence in himself?"
asked Sprague.
"His name is probably legion," answered Murdock quickly. "He is the
author of every crime whose history remains forever unwritten."
"And are these really so numerous?"
"Let us see how the case stands in one single class of crime--say, for
instance, murder. Whenever the solution of a sensational murder mystery
is effected by the detectives, or by their allies, the gentlemen of
the press, like our friend Mr. Sturgis, we, the gullible public,
vociferously applaud the achievements of these guardians of the public
safety, and forthwith proceed to award them a niche in the temple of
Fame. So far, so good. But what of the dark mysteries which remain
forever unsolved? What of the numerous crimes of which no one ever even
knows?"
"Oh! come now, Doctor," laughed Sprague, "isn't it rather paradoxical
to base your argument on the assumption of crimes of whose very
existence you admit you have no knowledge?"
Murdock smiled grimly as he replied:
"Go to the morgue of any large city, where the unrecognized dead are
exposed for identification. Aside from the morbid crowd which is drawn
to such a place by uncanny curiosity, you will find that each corpse
is anxiously scanned by numbers of people, each of whom is seeking a
missing friend or relative. At the most, each body can furnish the
key to only one mystery. Then what of the scores, ay, the hundreds of
others?"
After a short pause, he continued:
"No; murder will not out----at least not when the criminal is what I
might call a professional, a man of genius in his vocation, educated,
intelligent, dispassionate, scientific. Fortunately for the reputation
of the detective, amateur and professional, the genius in the criminal
line is necessarily of a modest and retiring disposition. _He_ cannot
call the public attention to his ingenuity and skill; _he_ cannot puff
his achievements in the daily press. Not only are his masterpieces
unsigned, but they remain forever unheard of. The detective is known
only by his successes; the criminal's reputation is based solely upon
his failures."
Doctor Murdock delivered this parting shot with the cool deliberateness
which was characteristic of the man. The insolent irony of his words
was emphasized by the calmness of his bearing.
"I say, Doctor," laughed Sprague, "you have missed your vocation. You
should have adopted the profession of scientific criminal yourself.
You seem to possess the theory of the science as it is, and a little
experience would no doubt have made you an adept in the practice as
well."
A look of mild amusement passed over Murdock's countenance.
"Perhaps you are right, Mr. Sprague. At any rate, I think I may affirm,
without overweening conceit, that if I had followed the course you
suggest, I could have prepared for your friend Mr. Sturgis some pretty
little problems on which to sharpen his wits. I feel that I could have
been an artist as well as a scientist in that line."
"You might console yourself by writing an interesting and valuable
book, under some such title as 'Hints to the Young Criminal,' or 'Crime
as a Fine Art.' At all events, your criminals of genius have a stanch
advocate in you. But what on earth have the detectives done to you to
call forth this wholesale vituperation?"
"Nothing. But, as a disinterested observer, I like to see fair play.
If I am mistaken in my estimate of the modern detective, I am open to
conviction. I have five thousand dollars to wager against one hundred
that I can pick up any daily paper and from its columns select an
unsolved riddle, to which no detective on the face of the earth can
give the answer. Have I any taker, gentlemen?"
As he spoke, his eyes met Sturgis's and suddenly seemed to flash with
an earnest defiance, which instantly melted into the calm, cynical
smile of the man of the world.
"Done," said Sturgis, quietly.
"Very well, Mr. Sturgis," observed Doctor Murdock indifferently. "I
shall confine myself to the columns of your own newspaper for the
selection of the problem upon which you are to work.
"And," he added, with a supercilious smile, "you are at liberty to fix
the limit of time in which the wager must be decided."
"Hear! hear!" exclaimed a young broker. "This is becoming interesting,
and promises some sport for those of us who are giddy enough to enjoy
staking something on this novel contest. I, for one, am willing to lay
reasonable odds on the side of law and order, as represented by the
enlightened press, in the person of our clever friend Sturgis. Come,
Chadwick, will two to one against the scientific criminal tempt you to
champion the cause of that apparently unappreciated individual?"
"Very well, Fred," answered the man addressed; "I'll take you for a
hundred."
A few similar bets were laughingly arranged, and a copy of the _Evening
Tempest_ was sent for.