HOW MASTER HOBBS GOT HIS BALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR’S YARD
WHEN Constable Hobbs had seen his visitors safely out of the house he
returned to the room of the crime full of thought.
It was apparent to him that this strange old man had read the secret and
method of the murder at a glance. Not two minutes had he been in the
room, and the tone of his involuntary exclamation announced that he had
solved the riddle.
How had he done it? What magic was there in this old man’s vision that
was lacking in his own? He had marked in his mind every movement, every
glance of Soft Sam—the door that had hardly arrested his slow walk into
the room, the fire-place he had only touched, and finally, the window
where the exclamation had taken place.
What was there so noticeable about the window to excite the old man? He
went towards it, and looked it over carefully. Four squares of glass,
two in each sash, secured by a common window-fastener, that was now
closed, as Police-Constable Hobbs had always seen it.
He opened the window, and scrutinized it carefully.
What were these two small lines that cut the paint of the lower bar of
the upper sash, immediately under the fastener?
He looked at them carefully. At the edges the cuts were deeper. They
were such marks as are seen on the tops of corks of lemonade bottles.
And the marks were recent.
“That’s it!” cried Hobbs, joyfully. “That’s what he saw! What a fool I
was never to have opened the window! They are hardly to be seen when it
is closed.”
But his triumph was only for a moment. These marks may have explained
everything to the old man; they were so far silent to Constable Hobbs.
He had, however, found a clue, and he started to think to put this and
that together.
The window had, so far, never entered his calculations; there were so
many objections to be overcome in that direction. Nevertheless, putting
them aside, he devoted all his thought to the window and its lock.
Drawing out his pocket-knife, he found it was an easy job to press back
the little brass bar when it was open. He remembered doing the same
trick as a boy, when he happened to be locked out of his own home. But
with the knife he found it quite impossible to shut the lock again from
the outside.
Descending to the kitchen of the house he procured a piece of very fine
wire, and, having borrowed a ladder, mounted to the window from the
outside. He had previously again closed the window. He now readily
opened it as before, with his knife pushed up between the junction of the
two sashes and pressed sideways. Raising the lower sash and bending his
wire in the form of a loop, he was able with a little dexterity to pass
it over the knob of the catch; holding the two ends of the wire in one
hand he drew down the lower sash, and then by a sideway pull easily
pulled the little brass bar out again.
The window was shut and locked. He had only to loosen one end of the
wire to withdraw the whole and place it in his pocket.
Descending the ladder and mounting to the room, he again opened the
window and examined the two marks. Yes, there could be no doubt on the
matter. The two marks were deeper and plainer than ever. His own wire
had fitted the grooves left by a previous one.
He felt happy and proud of himself. At any rate, he had beaten the
much-vaunted Dobell so far. So pleased was he at that moment, that if
some peripatetic hawker had at that time cried out “prawns” for sale in
the street, he would have lavishly treated himself to a pint, in spite of
Bell and all her lessons in domestic economy.
But this rash ardour soon cooled, and no demand was made on his tendency
to extravagance. He was not out of the wood yet, not by a long way, he
told himself, as he surveyed the iron bars and the thirty feet fall to
the ground.
“Supposing a man got to the window, how could he get through?”
He tried each iron bar. They were all solidly soldered into the stone
window-sill. Look at them as he would, they baffled him. Even a child
could not squeeze through. And then again, a ladder must have been used
to mount to the window. The one he had just used himself he had borrowed
from a painter who was at work on a house close by. But he remembered
that the morning after the murder, with the possible idea in his mind
that the murderer had got into the room from the chimney, he had searched
the neighbourhood for some distance round, and had found no
privately-owned ladder long enough, and no painters using ladders. It
was a common burglar’s trick to enter houses this way, so he had looked,
and carefully looked, but he had found no sign of ladder, or even marks
of where a ladder must have stood if it had been used.
His mind was in a turmoil. He thought and thought, but could see no way
out. At last, in despair, he went home to tea, and relieved his mind by
telling his discovery and his troubles to his wife. He had another
matter on his mind that worried him also. At the Golden Bar, which he
had visited more than once, he had had pointed out to him the person of
Huey Gosper, and the man’s aspect had struck him as familiar, but for the
life of him he could not bring to mind in what way or under what
conditions he had seen him before.
Mrs. Hobbs was rejoiced at her husband’s news.
“Didn’t I say so, Tom, you would find it out? I always had my doubts
about that window, though you were so positive! Why did you not look
before?”
“Why indeed!” echoed Tom. “Why don’t we do fifty things that are plain
enough to us after we have lost the opportunity?”
“And you can’t understand how the murderer got through the iron bars on
the window?”
“No, that’s what puzzles me most of all.”
“Perhaps he did not get through at all.”
“Don’t be a fool, Bell!”
“Drat that boy!” interjected Mrs. Hobbs. “He has got a new ball, and
won’t come in to his tea. Here, Harry! Come here!”
But Harry did not answer, and did not come. So his mother went to the
back door to call him. But she did not call him, but paused in a kind of
wonderment on the doorstep. Presently she shouted—
“Come here, Tom!”
Languidly, and with true official deliberation, Mr. Hobbs came to her
side.
“Well, what’s the matter, Bell?”
“Look at that boy, Tom. His ball has fallen in the next yard. He cannot
squeeze through the fence or climb over it, but he is getting the ball
all the same.”
“So I see. He has got your clothes-prop through the palings and is
dragging the ball towards him. That’s nothing. I used to steal apples
that way when I was a boy.”
“But does not that explain what you were talking about?”
“What! You think the murder might have been committed with a
clothes-prop?”
“No, I don’t say anything of the kind. But it might have been somehow in
the same way.”
“Bell, you’re mad! Wash up the tea-things, that’s more in your line.
I’ll have a smoke.”
Hobbs sat and puffed the blue clouds, and so deep was he lost in thought
that his lips puffed mechanically long after his pipe had gone out.
This idea of Bell’s was filtering into his mind. At first regarding it
as absurd, he gradually came to think it possible, then probable;
finally, he was morally certain there was a basis of truth in it. But
not a word of his revulsion of feeling did he let fall to Mrs. Hobbs. In
fact, he was quite convinced from that time forth that the idea was all
his own.
“Burning! Burning!” he said to himself, with reference to an old game of
hide-and-seek that he was wont to play in his boyhood, this being the cry
of the fellow players when the seeker was near the object sought.
Burning! Burning! He felt he was touching the key to the mystery at
last.
An hour might have passed, when he jumped up with a loud exclamation—
“I remember! I remember!”
“What do you remember?” inquired Mrs. Hobbs, coming in hurriedly from the
kitchen.
“I remember where I have seen this Huey Gosper before! He is the man I
saw on the night of the murder, chased in the scrub, and followed down
Lavender Bay steps to the boat! That’s the man! I will swear to him!”
“Will you arrest him?”
“I will apply for a warrant to-morrow! There is no hurry. He thinks
himself quite safe!”