“THE SINGING BONE”
(_Related by Christopher Jervis, M.D._)
To every kind of scientific work a certain amount of manual labour
naturally appertains, labour that cannot be performed by the
scientist himself, since art is long but life is short. A chemical
analysis involves a laborious “clean up” of apparatus and laboratory,
for which the chemist has no time; the preparation of a skeleton--the
maceration, bleaching, “assembling,” and riveting together of
bones--must be carried out by some one whose time is not too
precious. And so with other Scientific activities. Behind the man of
science with his outfit of knowledge is the indispensable mechanic
with his outfit of manual skill.
Thorndyke’s laboratory assistant, Polton, was a fine example of the
latter type, deft, resourceful, ingenious and untiring. He was
somewhat of an inventive genius, too; and it was one of his
inventions that connected us with the singular case that I am about
to record.
Though by trade a watchmaker, Polton was, by choice, an optician.
Optical apparatus was the passion of his life; and when, one day, he
produced for our inspection an improved prism for increasing the
efficiency of gas-buoys, Thorndyke at once brought the invention to
the notice of a friend at the Trinity House.
As a consequence, we three--Thorndyke, Polton and I--found ourselves
early on a fine July morning making our way down Middle Temple Lane
bound for the Temple Pier. A small oil-launch lay alongside the
pontoon, and, as we made our appearance, a red-faced, white-whiskered
gentleman stood up in the cockpit.
“Here’s a delightful morning, doctor,” he sang out in a fine, brassy,
resonant, seafaring voice; “sort of day for a trip to the lower
river, hey? Hallo, Polton! Coming down to take the bread out of our
mouths, are you? Ha, ha!” The cheery laugh rang out over the river
and mingled with the throb of the engine as the launch moved off from
the pier.
Captain Grumpass was one of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House.
Formerly a client of Thorndyke’s he had subsided, as Thorndyke’s
clients were apt to do, into the position of a personal friend, and
his hearty regard included our invaluable assistant.
“Nice state of things,” continued the captain, with a chuckle, “when
a body of nautical experts have got to be taught their business by a
parcel of lawyers or doctors, what? I suppose trade’s slack and
‘Satan findeth mischief still,’ hey, Polton?”
“There isn’t much doing on the civil side, sir,” replied Polton, with
a quaint, crinkly smile, “but the criminals are still going strong.”
“Ha! mystery department still flourishing, what? And, by Jove!
talking of mysteries, doctor, our people have got a queer problem to
work out; something quite in your line--quite. Yes, and, by the Lord
Moses, since I’ve got you here, why shouldn’t I suck your brains?”
“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “Why shouldn’t you?”
“Well, then, I will,” said the captain, “so here goes. All hands to
the pump!” He lit a cigar, and, after a few preliminary puffs, began:
“The mystery, shortly stated, is this: one of our lighthousemen has
disappeared--vanished off the face of the earth and left no trace. He
may have bolted, he may have been drowned accidentally or he may have
been murdered. But I’d rather give you the particulars in order. At
the end of last week a barge brought into Ramsgate a letter from the
screw-pile lighthouse on the Girdler. There are only two men there,
and it seems that one of them, a man named Barnett, had broken his
leg, and he asked that the tender should be sent to bring him ashore.
Well, it happened that the local tender, the _Warden_, was up on the
slip in Ramsgate Harbour, having a scrape down, and wouldn’t be
available for a day or two, so, as the case was urgent, the officer
at Ramsgate sent a letter to the lighthouse by one of the pleasure
steamers saying that the man should be relieved by boat on the
following morning, which was Saturday. He also wrote to a new hand
who had just been taken on, a man named James Brown, who was lodging
near Reculver, waiting his turn, telling him to go out on Saturday
morning in the coast-guard’s boat; and he sent a third letter to the
coast-guard at Reculver asking him to take Brown out to the
lighthouse and bring Barnett ashore. Well, between them, they made a
fine muddle of it. The coast-guard couldn’t spare either a boat or a
man, so they borrowed a fisherman’s boat, and in this the man Brown
started off alone, like an idiot, on the chance that Barnett would be
able to sail the boat back in spite of his broken leg.
“Meanwhile Barnett, who is a Whitstable man, had signalled a collier
bound for his native town, and got taken off; so that the other
keeper, Thomas Jeffreys, was left alone until Brown should turn up.
“But Brown never did turn up. The coast-guard helped him to put off
and saw him well out to sea, and the keeper, Jeffreys, saw a
sailing-boat with one man in her making for the lighthouse. Then a
bank of fog came up and hit the boat, and when the fog cleared she
was nowhere to be seen. Man and boat had vanished and left no sign.”
“He may have been run down,” Thorndyke suggested.
“He may,” agreed the captain, “but no accident has been reported. The
coast-guards think he may have capsized in a squall--they saw him
make the sheet fast. But there weren’t any squalls; the weather was
quite calm.”
“Was he all right and well when he put off?” inquired Thorndyke.
“Yes,” replied the captain, “the coast-guards’ report is highly
circumstantial; in fact, it’s full of silly details that have no
bearing on anything. This is what they say.” He pulled out an
official letter and read: “‘When last seen, the missing man was
seated in the boat’s stern to windward of the helm. He had belayed
the sheet. He was holding a pipe and tobacco-pouch in his hands and
steering with his elbow. He was filling the pipe from the
tobacco-pouch.’ There! ‘He was holding the pipe in his hand,’ mark
you! not with his toes; and he was filling it from a tobacco-pouch,
whereas you’d have expected him to fill it from a coal scuttle or a
feeding-bottle. Bah!” The captain rammed the letter back in his
pocket and puffed scornfully at his cigar.
“You are hardly fair to the coastguard,” said Thorndyke, laughing at
the captain’s vehemence. “The duty of a witness is to give _all_ the
facts, not a judicious selection.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Captain Grumpass, “what the deuce can it
matter what the poor devil filled his pipe from?”
“Who can say?” answered Thorndyke. “It may turn out to be a highly
material fact. One never knows before hand. The value of a particular
fact depends on its relation to the rest of the evidence.”
“I suppose it does,” grunted the captain; and he continued to smoke
in reflective silence until we opened Blackwall Point, when he
suddenly stood up.
“There’s a steam trawler alongside our wharf,” he announced. “Now
what the deuce can she be doing there?” He scanned the little steamer
attentively, and continued: “They seem to be landing something, too.
Just pass me those glasses, Polton. Why, hang me! it’s a dead body!
But why on earth are they landing it on our wharf? They must have
known you were coming, doctor.”
As the launch swept alongside the wharf, the captain sprang up
lightly and approached the group gathered round the body. “What’s
this?” he asked. “Why have they brought this thing here?”
The master of the trawler, who had superintended the landing,
proceeded to explain.
“It’s one of your men, sir,” said he. “We saw the body lying on the
edge of the South Shingles Sand, close to the beacon, as we passed at
low water, so we put off the boat and fetched it aboard. As there was
nothing to identify the man by, I had a look in his pockets and found
this letter.” He handed the captain an official envelope addressed to
“Mr. J. Brown, c/o Mr. Solly, Shepherd, Reculver, Kent.”
“Why, this is the man we were speaking about, doctor,” exclaimed
Captain Grumpass. “What a very singular coincidence. But what are we
to do with the body?”
“You will have to write to the coroner,” replied Thorndyke. “By the
way, did you turn out all the pockets?” he asked, turning to the
skipper of the trawler.
“No, sir,” was the reply. “I found the letter in the first pocket
that I felt in, so I didn’t examine any of the others. Is there
anything more that you want to know, sir?”
“Nothing but your name and address, for the coroner,” replied
Thorndyke, and the skipper, having given this information and
expressed the hope that the coroner would not keep him “hanging
about,” returned to his vessel and pursued his way to Billingsgate.
“I wonder if you would mind having a look at the body of this poor
devil, while Polton is showing us his contraptions,” said Captain
Grumpass.
“I can’t do much without a coroner’s order,” replied Thorndyke; “but
if it will give you any satisfaction, Jervis and I will make a
preliminary inspection with pleasure.”
“I should be glad if you would,” said the captain. “We should like to
know that the poor beggar met his end fairly.”
The body was accordingly moved to a shed, and, as Polton was led
away, carrying the black bag that contained his precious model, we
entered the shed and commenced our investigation.
The deceased was a small, elderly man, decently dressed in a somewhat
nautical fashion. He appeared to have been dead only two or three
days, and the body, unlike the majority of sea-borne corpses, was
uninjured by fish or crabs. There were no fractured bones or other
gross injuries, and no wounds, excepting a rugged tear in the scalp
at the back of the head.
“The general appearance of the body,” said Thorndyke, when he had
noted these particulars, “suggests death by drowning, though, of
course, we can’t give a definite opinion until a _post mortem_ has
been made.”
“You don’t attach any significance to that scalp-wound, then?” I
asked.
“As a cause of death? No. It was obviously inflicted during life, but
it seems to have been an oblique blow that spent its force on the
scalp, leaving the skull uninjured. But it is very significant in
another way.”
“In what way?” I asked.
Thorndyke took out his pocket-case and extracted a pair of forceps.
“Consider the circumstances,” said he. “This man put off from the
shore to go to the lighthouse, but never arrived there. The question
is, where did he arrive?” As he spoke he stooped over the corpse and
turned back the hair round the wound with the beak of the forceps.
“Look at those white objects among the hair, Jervis, and inside the
wound. They tell us something, I think.”
I examined, through my lens, the chalky fragments to which he
pointed. “These seem to be bits of shells and the tubes of some
marine worm,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered; “the broken shells are evidently those of the
acorn barnacle, and the other fragments are mostly pieces of the
tubes of the common serpula. The inference that these objects suggest
is an important one. It is that this wound was produced by some body
encrusted by acorn barnacles and serpulæ; that is to say, by a body
that is periodically submerged. Now, what can that body be, and how
can the deceased have knocked his head against it?”
“It might be the stem of a ship that ran him down,” I suggested.
“I don’t think you would find many serpulæ on the stem of a ship,”
said Thorndyke. “The combination rather suggests some stationary
object between tidemarks, such as a beacon. But one doesn’t see how a
man could knock his head against a beacon, while, on the other hand,
there are no other stationary objects out in the estuary to knock
against except buoys, and a buoy presents a flat surface that could
hardly have produced this wound. By the way, we may as well see what
there is in his pockets, though it is not likely that robbery had
anything to do with his death.”
“No,” I agreed, “and I see his watch is in his pocket; quite a good
silver one,” I added, taking it out. “It has stopped at 12.13.”
“That may be important,” said Thorndyke, making a note of the fact;
“but we had better examine the pockets one at a time, and put the
things back when we have looked at them.”
The first pocket that we turned out was the left hip-pocket of the
monkey jacket. This was apparently the one that the skipper had
rifled, for we found in it two letters, both bearing the crest of the
Trinity House. These, of course, we returned without reading, and
then passed on to the right pocket. The contents of this were
commonplace enough, consisting of a briar pipe, a moleskin pouch and
a number of loose matches.
“Rather a casual proceeding, this,” I remarked, “to carry matches
loose in the pocket, and a pipe with them, too.”
“Yes,” agreed Thorndyke; “especially with these very inflammable
matches. You notice that the sticks had been coated at the upper end
with sulphur before the red phosphorous heads were put on. They would
light with a touch, and would be very difficult to extinguish; which,
no doubt, is the reason that this type of match is so popular among
seamen, who have to light their pipes in all sorts of weather.” As he
spoke he picked up the pipe and looked at it reflectively, turning it
over in his hand and peering into the bowl. Suddenly he glanced from
the pipe to the dead man’s face and then, with the forceps, turned
back the lips to look into the mouth.
“Let us see what tobacco he smokes,” said he.
I opened the sodden pouch and displayed a mass of dark, fine-cut
tobacco. “It looks like shag,” I said.
“Yes, it is shag,” he replied; “and now we will see what is in the
pipe. It has been only half-smoked out.” He dug out the “dottle” with
his pocket-knife onto a sheet of paper, and we both inspected it.
Clearly it was not shag, for it consisted of coarsely-cut shreds and
was nearly black.
“Shavings from a cake of ‘hard,’” was my verdict, and Thorndyke
agreed as he shot the fragments back into the pipe.
The other pockets yielded nothing of interest, except a pocket-knife,
which Thorndyke opened and examined closely. There was not much
money, though as much as one would expect, and enough to exclude the
idea of robbery.
“Is there a sheath-knife on that strap?” Thorndyke asked, pointing to
a narrow leather belt. I turned back the jacket and looked.
“There is a sheath,” I said, “but no knife. It must have dropped out.”
“That is rather odd,” said Thorndyke. “A sailor’s sheath-knife takes
a deal of shaking out as a rule. It is intended to be used in working
on the rigging when the man is aloft, so that he can get it out with
one hand while he is holding on with the other. It has to be and
usually is very secure, for the sheath holds half the handle as well
as the blade. What makes one notice the matter in this case is that
the man, as you see, carried a pocket-knife; and, as this would serve
all the ordinary purposes of a knife, it seems to suggest that the
sheath-knife was carried for defensive purposes: as a weapon, in
fact. However, we can’t get much further in the case with out a _post
mortem_, and here comes the captain.”
Captain Grumpass entered the shed and looked down commiseratingly at
the dead seaman.
“Is there anything, doctor, that throws any light on the man’s
disappearance?” he asked.
“There are one or two curious features in the case,” Thorndyke
replied; “but, oddly enough, the only really important point arises
out of that statement of the coastguard’s, concerning which you were
so scornful.”
“You don’t say so!” exclaimed the captain.
“Yes,” said Thorndyke; “the coast-guard states that when last seen
deceased was filling his pipe from his tobacco pouch. Now his pouch
contains shag; but the pipe in his pocket contains hard cut.”
“Is there no cake tobacco in any of the pockets?”
“Not a fragment. Of course, it is possible that he might have had a
piece and used it up to fill the pipe; but there is no trace of any
on the blade of his pocket-knife, and you know how this juicy black
cake stains a knife-blade. His sheath-knife is missing, but he would
hardly have used that to shred tobacco when he had a pocket-knife.”
“No,” assented the captain; “but are you sure he hadn’t a second
pipe?”
“There was only one pipe,” replied Thorndyke, “and that was not his
own.”
“Not his own!” exclaimed the captain, halting by a huge, chequered
buoy to stare at my colleague. “How do you know it was not his own?”
“By the appearance of the vulcanite mouthpiece,” said Thorndyke. “It
showed deep tooth-marks; in fact, it was nearly bitten through. Now a
man who bites through his pipe usually presents certain definite
physical peculiarities, among which is, necessarily, a fairly good
set of teeth. But the dead man had not a tooth in his head.”
The captain cogitated a while, and then remarked: “I don’t quite see
the bearing of this.”
“Don’t you?” said Thorndyke. “It seems to me highly suggestive. Here
is a man who, when last seen, was filling his pipe with a particular
kind of tobacco. He is picked up dead, and his pipe contains a
totally different kind of tobacco. Where did that tobacco come from?
The obvious suggestion is that he had met some one.”
“Yes, it does look like it,” agreed the captain.
“Then,” continued Thorndyke, “there is the fact that his sheath-knife
is missing. That may mean nothing, but we have to bear it in mind.
And there is another curious circumstance: there is a wound on the
back of the head caused by a heavy bump against some body that was
covered with acorn barnacles and marine worms. Now there are no piers
or stages out in the open estuary. The question is, what could he
have struck?”
“Oh, there is nothing in that,” said the captain. “When a body has
been washing about in a tide-way for close on three days----”
“But this is not a question of a body,” Thorndyke interrupted. “The
wound was made during life.”
“The deuce it was!” exclaimed the captain. “Well, all I can suggest
is that he must have fouled one of the beacons in the fog, stove in
his boat and bumped his head, though, I must admit, that’s rather a
lame explanation.” He stood for a minute gazing at his toes with a
cogitative frown and then looked up at Thorndyke.
“I have an idea,” he said. “From what you say, this matter wants
looking into pretty carefully. Now, I am going down on the tender
to-day to make inquiries on the spot. What do you say to coming with
me as adviser--as a matter of business, of course--you and Dr.
Jervis? I shall start about eleven; we shall be at the lighthouse by
three o’clock, and you can get back to town to-night, if you want to.
What do you say?”
“There’s nothing to hinder us,” I put in eagerly, for even at
Bugsby’s Hole the river looked very alluring on this summer morning.
“Very well,” said Thorndyke, “we will come. Jervis is evidently
hankering for a sea-trip, and so am I, for that matter.”
“It’s a business engagement, you know,” the captain stipulated.
“Nothing of the kind,” said Thorndyke; “it’s unmitigated pleasure;
the pleasure of the voyage and your high well-born society.”
“I didn’t mean that,” grumbled the captain, “but, if you are coming
as guests, send your man for your nightgear and let us bring you back
tomorrow evening.”
“We won’t disturb Polton,” said my colleague; “we can take the train
from Blackwall and fetch our things ourselves. Eleven o’clock, you
said?”
“Thereabouts,” said Captain Grumpass; “but don’t put yourselves out.”
The means of communication in London have reached an almost
undesirable state of perfection. With the aid of the snorting train
and the tinkling, two-wheeled “gondola,” we crossed and re-crossed
the town with such celerity that it was barely eleven when we
reappeared on Trinity Wharf with a joint Gladstone and Thorndyke’s
little green case.
The tender had hauled out of Bow Creek, and now lay alongside the
wharf with a great striped can buoy dangling from her derrick, and
Captain Grumpass stood at the gang way, his jolly, red face beaming
with pleasure. The buoy was safely stowed forward, the derrick hauled
up to the mast, the loose shrouds rehooked to the screw-lanyards, and
the steamer, with four jubilant hoots, swung round and shoved her
sharp nose against the incoming tide.
For near upon four hours the ever-widening stream of the “London
River” unfolded its moving panorama. The smoke and smell of Woolwich
Reach gave place to lucid air made soft by the summer haze; the grey
huddle of factories fell away and green levels of cattle-spotted
marsh stretched away to the high land bordering the river valley.
Venerable training ships displayed their chequered hulls by the
wooded shore, and whispered of the days of oak and hemp, when the
tall three-decker, comely and majestic, with her soaring heights of
canvas, like towers of ivory, had not yet given place to the
mud-coloured saucepans that fly the white ensign now-a-days and
devour the substance of the British taxpayer: when a sailor was a
sailor and not a mere seafaring mechanic. Sturdily breasting the
flood tide, the tender threaded her way through the endless
procession of shipping; barges, billy-boys, schooners, brigs; lumpish
Black-seamen, blue-funnelled China tramps, rickety Baltic barques
with twirling windmills, gigantic liners, staggering under a mountain
of top-hamper. Erith, Purfleet, Greenhithe, Grays greeted us and
passed astern. The chimneys of Northfleet, the clustering roofs of
Gravesend, the populous anchorage and the lurking batteries, were
left behind, and, as we swung out of the Lower Hope, the wide expanse
of sea reach spread out before us like a great sheet of blue-shot
satin.
About half-past twelve the ebb overtook us and helped us on our way,
as we could see by the speed with which the distant land slid past,
and the freshening of the air as we passed through it.
But sky and sea were hushed in a summer calm. Balls of fleecy cloud
hung aloft, motionless in the soft blue; the barges drifted on the
tide with drooping sails, and a big, striped bell buoy--surmounted by
a staff and cage and labelled “Shivering Sand”--sat dreaming in the
sun above its motionless reflection, to rouse for a moment as it met
our wash, nod its cage drowsily, utter a Solemn ding-dong, and fall
asleep again.
It was shortly after passing the buoy that the gaunt shape of a
screw-pile lighthouse began to loom up ahead, its dull red paint
turned to vermilion by the early afternoon sun. As we drew nearer,
the name _Girdler_, painted in huge, white letters, became visible,
and two men could be seen in the gallery around the lantern,
inspecting us through a telescope.
“Shall you be long at the lighthouse, sir?” the master of the tender
inquired of Captain Grumpass; “because we’re going down to the
North-East Pan Sand to fix this new buoy and take up the old one.”
“Then you’d better put us off at the lighthouse and come back for us
when you’ve finished the job,” was the reply. “I don’t know how long
we shall be.”
The tender was brought to, a boat lowered, and a couple of hands
pulled us across the intervening space of water.
“It will be a dirty climb for you in your shore-going clothes,” the
captain remarked--he was as spruce as a new pin himself, “but the
stuff will all wipe off.” We looked up at the skeleton shape. The
falling tide had exposed some fifteen feet of the piles, and piles
and ladder alike were swathed in sea-grass and encrusted with
barnacles and worm tubes. But we were not such town-sparrows as the
captain seemed to think, for we both followed his lead without
difficulty up the slippery ladder, Thorndyke clinging tenaciously to
his little green case, from which he refused to be separated even for
an instant.
“These gentlemen and I,” said the captain, as we stepped on the stage
at the head of the ladder, “have come to make inquiries about the
missing man, James Brown. Which of you is Jeffreys?”
“I am, sir,” replied a tall, powerful, square-jawed, beetle-browed
man, whose left hand was tied up in a rough bandage.
“What have you been doing to your hand?” asked the captain.
“I cut it while I was peeling some potatoes,” was the reply. “It
isn’t much of a cut, sir.”
“Well, Jeffreys,” said the captain, “Brown’s body has been picked up
and I want particulars for the inquest. You’ll be summoned as a
witness, I suppose, so come in and tell us all you know.”
We entered the living-room and seated ourselves at the table. The
captain opened a massive pocket-book, while Thorndyke, in his
attentive, inquisitive fashion, looked about the odd, cabin-like room
as if making a mental inventory of its contents.
Jeffreys’ statement added nothing to what we already knew. He had
seen a boat with one man in it making for the lighthouse. Then the
fog had drifted up and he had lost sight of the boat. He started the
fog-horn and kept a bright look-out, but the boat never arrived. And
that was all he knew. He supposed that the man must have missed the
lighthouse and been carried away on the ebb-tide, which was running
strongly at the time.
“What time was it when you last saw the boat?” Thorndyke asked.
“About half-past eleven,” replied Jeffreys.
“What was the man like?” asked the captain.
“I don’t know, sir; he was rowing, and his back was towards me.”
“Had he any kit-bag or chest with him?” asked Thorndyke.
“He’d got his chest with him,” said Jeffreys.
“What sort of chest was it?” inquired Thorndyke.
“A small chest, painted green, with rope beckets.”
“Was it corded?”
“It had a single cord round, to hold the lid down.”
“Where was it stowed?”
“In the stern-sheets, sir.”
“How far off was the boat when you last saw it?”
“About half-a-mile.”
“Half-a-mile!” exclaimed the captain. “Why, how the deuce could you
see that chest half-a-mile away?”
The man reddened and cast a look of angry suspicion at Thorndyke. “I
was watching the boat through the glass, sir,” he replied sulkily.
“I see,” said Captain Grumpass. “Well, that will do, Jeffreys. We
shall have to arrange for you to attend the inquest. Tell Smith I
want to see him.”
The examination concluded, Thorndyke and I moved our chairs to the
window, which looked out over the sea to the east. But it was not the
sea or the passing ships that engaged my colleague’s attention. On
the wall, beside the window, hung a rudely-carved pipe-rack
containing five pipes. Thorndyke had noted it when we entered the
room, and now, as we talked, I observed him regarding it from time to
time with speculative interest.
“You men seem to be inveterate smokers,” he remarked to the keeper,
Smith, when the captain had concluded the arrangements for the
“shift.”
“Well, we do like our bit of ‘baccy, sir, and that’s a fact,”
answered Smith. “You see, sir,” he continued, “it’s a lonely life,
and tobacco’s cheap out here.”
“How is that?” asked Thorndyke.
“Why, we get it given to us. The small craft from foreign, especially
the Dutchmen, generally heave us a cake or two when they pass close.
We’re not ashore, you see, so there’s no duty to pay.”
“So you don’t trouble the tobacconists much? Don’t go in for cut
tobacco?”
“No, sir; we’d have to buy it, and then the cut stuff wouldn’t keep.
No, it’s hard-tack to eat out here and hard tobacco to smoke.”
“I see you’ve got a pipe-rack, too, quite a stylish affair.”
“Yes,” said Smith, “I made it in my off-time. Keeps the place tidy
and looks more ship-shape than letting the pipes lay about anywhere.”
“Some one seems to have neglected his pipe,” said Thorndyke, pointing
to one at the end of the rack which was coated with green mildew.
“Yes; that’s Parsons, my mate. He must have left it when he went off
near a month ago. Pipes do go mouldy in the damp air out here.”
“How soon does a pipe go mouldy if it is left untouched?” Thorndyke
asked.
“It’s according to the weather,” said Smith. “When it’s warm and damp
they’ll begin to go in about a week. Now here’s Barnett’s pipe that
he’s left behind--the man that broke his leg, you know, sir--it’s
just beginning to spot a little. He couldn’t have used it for a day
or two before he went.”
“And are all these other pipes yours?”
“No, sir. This here one is mine. The end one is Jeffreys’, and I
suppose the middle one is his too, but I don’t know it.”
“You’re a demon for pipes, doctor,” said the captain, strolling up at
this moment; “you seem to make a special study of them.”
“‘The proper study of mankind is man,’” replied Thorndyke, as the
keeper retired, “and ‘man’ includes those objects on which his
personality is impressed. Now a pipe is a very personal thing. Look
at that row in the rack. Each has its own physiognomy which, in a
measure, reflects the peculiarities of the owner. There is Jeffreys’
pipe at the end, for instance. The mouthpiece is nearly bitten
through, the bowl scraped to a shell and scored inside and the brim
battered and chipped. The whole thing speaks of rude strength and
rough handling. He chews the stem as he smokes, he scrapes the bowl
violently, and he bangs the ashes out with unnecessary force. And the
man fits the pipe exactly: powerful, square-jawed and, I should say,
violent on occasion.”
“Yes, he looks a tough customer, does Jeffreys,” agreed the captain.
“Then,” continued Thorndyke, “there is Smith’s pipe, next to it;
‘coked’ up until the cavity is nearly filled and burnt all round the
edge; a talker’s pipe, constantly going out and being relit. But the
one that interests me most is the middle one.”
“Didn’t Smith say that was Jeffreys’ too?” I said.
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke, “but he must be mistaken. It is the very
opposite of Jeffreys’ pipe in every respect. To begin with, although
it is an old pipe, there is not a sign of any tooth-mark on the
mouthpiece. It is the only one in the rack that is quite unmarked.
Then the brim is quite uninjured: it has been handled gently, and the
silver band is jet-black, whereas the band on Jeffreys’ pipe is quite
bright.”
“I hadn’t noticed that it had a band,” said the captain. “What has
made it so black?”
Thorndyke lifted the pipe out of the rack and looked at it closely.
“Silver sulphide,” said he, “the sulphur no doubt derived from
something carried in the pocket.”
“I see,” said Captain Grumpass, smothering a yawn and gazing out of
the window at the distant tender. “Incidentally it’s full of tobacco.
What moral do you draw from that?”
Thorndyke turned the pipe over and looked closely at the mouthpiece.
“The moral is,” he replied, “that you should see that your pipe is
clear before you fill it.” He pointed to the mouthpiece, the bore of
which was completely stopped up with fine fluff.
“An excellent moral too,” said the captain, rising with an other
yawn. “If you’ll excuse me a minute I’ll just go and see what the
tender is up to. She seems to be crossing to the East Girdler.” He
reached the telescope down from its brackets and went out onto the
gallery.
As the captain retreated, Thorndyke opened his pocket knife, and,
sticking the blade into the bowl of the pipe, turned the tobacco out
into his hand.
“Shag, by Jove!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” he answered, poking it back into the bowl. “Didn’t you expect
it to be shag?”
“I don’t know that I expected anything,” I admitted. “The silver band
was occupying my attention.”
“Yes, that is an interesting point,” said Thorndyke, “but let us see
what the obstruction consists of.” He opened the green case, and,
taking out a dissecting needle, neatly extracted a little ball of
fluff from the bore of the pipe. Laying this on a glass slide, he
teased it out in a drop of glycerine and put on a cover-glass while I
set up the microscope.
“Better put the pipe back in the rack,” he said, as he laid the slide
on the stage of the instrument. I did so and then turned, with no
little excitement, to watch him as he examined the specimen. After a
brief inspection he rose and waved his hand towards the microscope.
“Take a look at it, Jervis,” he said.
I applied my eye to the instrument, and, moving the slide about,
identified the constituents of the little mass of fluff. The
ubiquitous cotton fibre was, of course, in evidence, and a few fibres
of wool, but the most remarkable objects were two or three
hairs--very minute hairs of a definite zigzag shape and having a flat
expansion near the free end like the blade of a paddle.
“These are the hairs of some small animal,” I said; “not a mouse or
rat or any rodent, I should say. Some small insectivorous animal, I
fancy. Yes! Of course! They are the hairs of a mole.” I stood up,
and, as the importance of the discovery flashed on me, I looked at my
colleague in silence.
“Yes,” he said, “they are unmistakable; and they furnish the keystone
of the argument.”
“You think that this is really the dead man’s pipe, then?” I said.
“According to the law of multiple evidence,” he replied, “it is
practically a certainty. Consider the facts in sequence. Since there
is no sign of mildew on it, this pipe can have been here only a short
time, and must belong either to Barnett, Smith, Jeffreys or Brown. It
is an old pipe, but it has no tooth-marks on it. Therefore it has
been used by a man who has no teeth. But Barnett, Smith and Jeffreys
all have teeth and mark their pipes, whereas Brown has no teeth. The
tobacco in it is shag. But these three men do not smoke shag, whereas
Brown had shag in his pouch. The silver band is encrusted with
sulphide; and Brown carried sulphur-tipped matches loose in his
pocket with his pipe. We find hairs of a mole in the bore of the
pipe; and Brown carried a mole skin pouch in the pocket in which he
appears to have carried his pipe. Finally, Brown’s pocket contained a
pipe which was obviously not his and which closely resembled that of
Jeffreys; it contained tobacco similar to that which Jeffreys smokes
and different from that in Brown’s pouch. It appears to me quite
conclusive, especially when we add to this evidence the other items
that are in our possession.”
“What items are they?” I asked.
“First there is the fact that the dead man had knocked his head
heavily against some periodically submerged body covered with acorn
barnacles and serpulæ. Now the piles of this lighthouse answer to the
description exactly, and there are no other bodies in the
neighbourhood that do: for even the beacons are too large to have
produced that kind of wound. Then the dead man’s sheath-knife is
missing, and Jeffreys has a knife-wound on his hand. You must admit
that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.”
At this moment the captain bustled into the room with the telescope
in his hand. “The tender is coming up towing a strange boat,” he
said. “I expect it’s the missing one, and, if it is, we may learn
something. You’d better pack up your traps and get ready to go on
board.”
We packed the green case and went out into the gallery, where the two
keepers were watching the approaching tender; Smith frankly curious
and interested, Jeffreys restless, fidgety and noticeably pale. As
the steamer came opposite the lighthouse, three men dropped into the
boat and pulled across, and one of them--the mate of the tender--came
climbing up the ladder.
“Is that the missing boat?” the captain sang out.
“Yes, sir,” answered the officer, stepping onto the staging and
wiping his hands on the reverse aspect of his trousers, “we saw her
lying on the dry patch of the East Girdler. There’s been some
hanky-panky in this job, sir.”
“Foul play, you think, hey?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir. The plug was out and lying loose in the
bottom, and we found a sheath-knife sticking into the kelson forward
among the coils of the painter. It was stuck in hard as if it had
dropped from a height.”
“That’s odd,” said the captain. “As to the plug, it might have got
out by accident.”
“But it hadn’t sir,” said the mate. “The ballast-bags had been
shifted along to get the bottom boards up. Besides, sir, a seaman
wouldn’t let the boat fill; he’d have put the plug back and baled
out.”
“That’s true,” replied Captain Grumpass; “and certainly the presence
of the knife looks fishy. But where the deuce could it have dropped
from, out in the open sea? Knives don’t drop from the
clouds--fortunately. What do you say, doctor?”
“I should say that it is Brown’s own knife, and that it probably fell
from this staging.”
Jeffreys turned swiftly, crimson with wrath. “What d’ye mean?” he
demanded. “Haven’t I said that the boat never came here?”
“You have,” replied Thorndyke; “but if that is so, how do you explain
the fact that your pipe was found in the dead man’s pocket and that
the dead man’s pipe is at this moment in your pipe-rack?”
The crimson flush on Jeffreys’ face faded as quickly as it had come.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he faltered.
“I’ll tell you,” said Thorndyke. “I will relate what happened and you
shall check my statements. Brown brought his boat alongside and came
up into the living-room, bringing his chest with him. He filled his
pipe and tried to light it, but it was stopped and wouldn’t draw.
Then you lent him a pipe of yours and filled it for him. Soon
afterwards you came out on this staging and quarrelled. Brown
defended himself with his knife, which dropped from his hand into the
boat. You pushed him off the staging and he fell, knocking his head
on one of the piles. Then you took the plug out of the boat and sent
her adrift to sink, and you flung the chest into the sea. This
happened about ten minutes past twelve. Am I right?”
Jeffreys stood staring at Thorndyke, the picture of amazement and
consternation; but he uttered no word in reply.
“Am I right?” Thorndyke repeated.
“Strike me blind!” muttered Jeffreys. “Was you here, then? You talk
as if you had been. Anyhow,” he continued, recovering somewhat, “you
seem to know all about it. But you’re wrong about one thing. There
was no quarrel. This chap, Brown, didn’t take to me and he didn’t
mean to stay out here. He was going to put off and go ashore again
and I wouldn’t let him. Then he hit out at me with his knife and I
knocked it out of his hand and he staggered backwards and went
overboard.”
“And did you try to pick him up?” asked the captain.
“How could I,” demanded Jeffreys, “with the tide racing down and me
alone on the station? I’d never have got back.”
“But what about the boat, Jeffreys? Why did you scuttle her?”
“The fact is,” replied Jeffreys, “I got in a funk, and I thought the
simplest plan was to send her to the cellar and know nothing about
it. But I never shoved him over. It was an accident, sir; I swear it!”
“Well, that sounds a reasonable explanation,” said the captain. “What
do you say, doctor?”
“Perfectly reasonable,” replied Thorndyke, “and, as to its truth,
that is no affair of ours.”
“No. But I shall have to take you off, Jeffreys, and hand you over to
the police. You understand that?”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” answered Jeffreys.
“That was a queer case, that affair on the Girdler,” remarked Captain
Grumpass, when he was spending an evening with us some six months
later. “A pretty easy let off for Jeffreys, too--eighteen months,
wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was a very queer case indeed,” said Thorndyke. “There was
something behind that ‘accident,’ I should say. Those men had
probably met before.”
“So I thought,” agreed the captain. “But the queerest part of it to
me was the way you nosed it all out. I’ve had a deep respect for
briar pipes since then. It was a remarkable case,” he continued. “The
way in which you made that pipe tell the story of the murder seems to
me like sheer enchantment.”
“Yes,” said I, “it spoke like the magic pipe--only that wasn’t a
tobacco-pipe--in the German folk-story of the ‘Singing Bone.’ Do you
remember it? A peasant found the bone of a murdered man and fashioned
it into a pipe. But when he tried to play on it, it burst into a song
of its own--
_‘My brother slew me and buried my bones Beneath the sand and under
the stones.’”_
“A pretty story,” said Thorndyke, “and one with an excellent moral.
The inanimate things around us have each of them a song to sing to us
if we are but ready with attentive ears.”
A WASTREL’S ROMANCE