In Which Thorndyke Tries Over the Moves
It was in a deeply meditative frame of mind that Thorndyke pursued his
way towards his chambers after parting with the Superintendent. For
the inspection which he had just made had developed points of interest
other than those which he had discussed with the detective officer.
To his acute mind, habituated to rapid inference, the case of the
mysterious Mr. Bromeswell had inevitably presented a parallelism with
that of Daniel Purcell. Bromeswell had disappeared without leaving a
trace. If he had absconded, he had done so without premeditation or
preparation, apparently under the compulsion of some unforeseen but
imperative necessity. But that was precisely Purcell’s case, and the
instant the mere comparison was made, other points of agreement began
to appear and multiply in the most startling manner.
The physical resemblance between Purcell and the hypothetical
Bromeswell was striking but not conclusive. Both were big, heavy men;
but such men are not uncommon and the resemblance in the matter of the
moustache had to be verified—or disproved. But the other points of
agreement were very impressive—impressive alike by their completeness
and by their number. Both men were connected with the making of paper,
and of the same kind—hand-made paper. The banknote moulds had been
stolen or lost at Maidstone about six years ago. But at that very time
Purcell was at Maidstone and was then engaged in the paper industry.
Bromeswell appeared to have a sailor’s knowledge and skill in respect
of cordage. But Purcell was a yachtsman and had such knowledge and
skill. Then the dates of the two disappearances coincided very
strikingly. Bromeswell disappeared from London about the tenth of
June; Purcell disappeared from Penzance on the twenty-third of June.
Even in trivial circumstances there was curious agreement. For
instance, it was a noticeable coincidence that Bromeswell’s pipe
should have been bought at a shop within a minute’s walk of Purcell’s
office.
But there was another coincidence that Thorndyke had noted, even while
he was examining the premises at Clifford’s Inn. Those premises were
concerned exclusively with the making of the paper blanks on which the
notes would later be printed. Of the engraving and printing activities
there was no trace. Bromeswell was a paper-maker, pure and simple; but
somewhere in the background there must have been a confederate who was
an engraver and a printer, to whom Bromeswell supplied the paper
blanks, and who engraved the plates and printed the notes. But Purcell
had one intimate friend; and that friend was a skilful engraver who
was able to print from engraved plates. Moreover the rather vague
description given by the Belgian police of the man who uttered the
forged notes, while it obviously could not apply to Purcell, agreed
very completely with Purcell’s intimate friend.
And there was yet another agreement, perhaps more striking than any.
If it were assumed that Bromeswell and Purcell were one and the same
person, the whole of the mystery connected with Mr. Penfield’s letter
was resolved. Everything became consistent and intelligible—up to a
certain point. If the mysterious “enclosures” were a batch of paper
blanks with the Bank of England water-mark on them, it was easy to
understand Mr. Penfield’s reticence; for he had made himself an
accessory to a felony, to say nothing of the offence that he was
committing by having these things in his possession. It would also
account completely for Purcell’s sudden flight and his silence as to
his whereabouts; for he would, naturally, assume that no lawyer would
be such an imbecile as to accept the position of an accessory to a
crime that he had no connection with. He would take it for granted
that Penfield would forthwith hand the letter and enclosures to the
police.
But there were one or two difficulties. In the first place the theory
implied an incredible lack of caution on the part of Penfield, who was
a lawyer of experience and would fully appreciate the risk he was
running. Then it assumed an equally amazing lack of care and caution
in the case of Purcell; a carelessness quite at variance with the
scrupulous caution and well-maintained secrecy of the establishment at
Clifford’s Inn. But the most serious discrepancy was the presence of
the paper blanks in a letter. The letter into which they ought to have
been put would be addressed to the confederate; and that confederate
was assumed to be Varney. But why should they have been sent in a
letter to Varney? On the very day on which the letter was posted,
Varney and Purcell had been alone together for some hours on the
yacht. The blanks could have been handed to Varney then, and naturally
would have been. The discrepancy seemed to render the hypothesis
untenable, or at any rate to rule out Varney as the possible
confederate.
But it was impossible to dismiss the hypothesis as untenable. The
agreements with the observed facts were too numerous; and as soon as
the inquiry was transferred to a new field, a fresh set of agreements
came into view. Very methodically Thorndyke considered the theory of
the identity of Purcell with Bromeswell in connection with his
interviews with Mr. Penfield and Mr. Levy.
Taking the latter first, what had it disclosed? It had shown that
Purcell was a common money-lender; not an incriminating fact, for the
business of a money-lender is not in itself unlawful. But it is a
vocation to which little credit attaches, and its practice is
frequently associated with very unethical conduct. It is rather on the
outside edge of lawful industry.
But what of Levy? Apparently he was not a mere employé. He appeared to
be able to get on quite well without Purcell and seemed to have the
status of a partner. Was it possible that he was a partner in the
other concern, too? It was not impossible. A money-lender has
excellent opportunities for getting rid of good flash notes. His
customers usually want notes in preference to cheques; and he could
even get batches of notes from the Bank and number his forgeries to
correspond, thus protecting himself in case of discovery. But even if
Levy were a confederate, he would not exclude Varney, for there was no
reason to suppose that he was an engraver, whereas Varney was both an
engraver and an old and constant associate of Purcell’s. In short,
Levy was not very obviously in the picture at all, and, for the time
being, Thorndyke dismissed him and passed on to the other case. Taking
now the interview with Penfield, there were the facts elicited by the
examination of the envelope. That envelope had contained a rather
bulky mass, apparently of folded paper, about five inches long, or a
little more, and somewhat less than three inches wide. Thorndyke rose,
and taking from the bookshelves a manuscript book labelled
“Dimensions,” found in the index the entry “Bank-notes” and turned to
the page indicated. Here the dimensions of a five-pound note were
given as eight inches and three-eighths long by five inches and five
thirty-seconds wide. Folded lengthwise into three it would thus be
five inches and five thirty-seconds—or say five and an eighth long by
two and three-quarters wide, if folded quite accurately, or a fraction
more if folded less exactly. The enclosure in Penfield’s envelope was
therefore exactly the size of a small batch of notes folded into
three. It did not follow that the enclosures actually were banknotes.
They might have been papers of some other kind but of similar size.
But the observed facts were in complete agreement with the supposition
that they were banknotes; and taken in conjunction with Penfield’s
extraordinary secrecy and the wording of his letter to Margaret
Purcell, they strongly supported that supposition.
Then there was the suggestion that the envelope had been steamed open
and reclosed. It was only a suggestion; not a certainty. The
appearances might be misleading. But to Thorndyke’s expert eye the
suggestion had been very strong. The gum had smeared upwards on the
inside, which seemed impossible if the envelope had been closed once
for all; and the paper showed traces of cockling, as if it had been
damped. Mr. Penfield had rejected the suggestion; partly for the
excellent reasons that he had given, but also, perhaps, because
Purcell’s flight implied that he had discovered the mistake and that
therefore the mistake was presumably his own.
But there was one important point that Penfield seemed to have
overlooked. The letter that he expected to receive would (presumably)
have contained no enclosures. The letter that he did receive contained
a bulky enclosure which bulged the envelope. The two letters must
therefore have been very different in appearance. Now, ordinarily,
when two letters are put each into the envelope of the other, when
once the envelopes are closed the mistake is covered up. There is
nothing in their exterior to suggest that any mistake has occurred.
But in the present case the error was blatantly advertised by the
appearance of the closed letters. Penfield’s envelope, which should
have been flat, bulged with its contents. The other envelope—if there
was one, as there almost certainly must have been—which should have
bulged, was conspicuously flat. Of course, Penfield may have been
wrong in assuming that no enclosures were to be sent to him. Both
letters may have held enclosures. But taking the evidence as it was
presented, it was to the effect that there were enclosures in only one
of the letters. And if that were the case, the mistake appeared
incredible. It became impossible to understand how Purcell could have
handled the two letters and finally put them into the post without
seeing that the enclosures were in the wrong envelope.
What was the significance of the point? Well, it raised the question
whether Purcell could possibly have posted this letter himself, and
this question involved the further question whether the envelope had
been opened and reclosed. For if it had, the transposition of the
contents must have taken place after the letters left Purcell’s hands.
Against this was the fact of Purcell’s flight, which made it
practically certain that he had become aware of the transposition. But
it was not conclusive, and having noted the objection, Thorndyke
proceeded to follow out the alternative theory. Accepting for the
moment, the hypothesis that the letter had been opened and the
transposition made intentionally, certain other questions arose.
First, Who had the opportunity? Second, What could have been the
purpose of the act? and, third, Who could have had such a purpose?
Thorndyke considered these questions in the same methodical fashion,
taking them one by one, in the order stated.
Who had the opportunity? That depended, among other things, on the
time at which the letter was posted. Penfield had stated that the
letter had been posted at 8:30 p.m. If that were true, it put Varney
out of the problem, for he had left Penzance some hours before that
time. But it was not true. The time shown by the post-mark was not the
time at which the letter was posted but that at which it was sorted at
the post office. It might have been posted at a pillar-box some hours
previously. It was therefore not impossible that it might have been
posted by Varney. And if it was physically possible, it at once became
the most probable assumption, since there was no reasonable
alternative. It was inconceivable that Purcell should have handed the
letters to a stranger to post, and if he had, it was inconceivable
that that stranger should have opened the letters and transposed their
contents. There was, indeed, the possibility that Purcell had met a
confederate at Penzance and had handed him the letters—one of which
would be addressed to himself—to post; and that this confederate might
have made the transposition. But this was pure speculation without a
particle of evidence to support it; whereas Varney, as an intimate
friend, even if not a confederate, might conceivably have had the
letters handed to him to post, though this was profoundly improbable,
seeing that Purcell was going ashore and Varney was in charge of the
yacht. In effect, there was no positive evidence that anybody had had
the opportunity to make the transposition; but if it had not been done
by Purcell, himself, then Varney appeared to be the only possible
agent.
From this vague and unsatisfactory conclusion Thorndyke proceeded to
the second question; assuming the transposition to have been made
intentionally, what could have been the purpose of the act? To this
question, so far as the immediate purpose was concerned, the answer
was obvious enough, since only one was possible. The blanks must have
been put into Mr. Penfield’s envelope for the express purpose of
notifying the solicitor that Purcell was a bank-note forger; in short,
for the purpose of exposing Purcell. This led at once to the third
question: Who could have had such a purpose? But to this also the
answer was obvious. The only person who could have had such a purpose
would be a confederate; for no one else would have been in possession
of the knowledge that would make such a purpose possible. The
transposition could have been made only by some one who knew what the
contents of the envelopes were.
But why should any confederate have done this? The exposure of Purcell
involved at least a risk of the exposure of his confederate; and it
could be assumed that if Purcell suspected that he had been betrayed,
he would certainly denounce his betrayer. The object, therefore, could
not have been to secure the arrest of Purcell, a conclusion that was
confirmed by the fact that Purcell had become aware of the
transposition, and if he had not done it himself, must apparently have
been informed in time to allow of his escaping.
But what other object could there be? Was it possible that the
confederate wished to get rid of Purcell and made this exposure with
the express purpose of compelling him to disappear? That raised the
question: When did Purcell become aware that the transposition had
been made? And the answer was somewhat perplexing. He could not have
become aware of it immediately, or he would have telegraphed to
Penfield and stopped the letter; and yet he seemed to have absconded
at once, before the letter could have been delivered to Penfield. He
was due at Oulton the following day and he never arrived there. He was
stated to have gone from Penzance to Falmouth. That might or might not
be true; but the voyage to Ipswich was evidently a myth. The answer
that he had received from the owners of the _Hedwig_, enclosing a
report from the captain of the ship, showed that the only passengers
who embarked at Falmouth were three distressed Swedish sailors, who
travelled with the ship to Malmo, and that no one went ashore at
Ipswich. It followed that Varney had either been misinformed or had
invented the incidents; but when it was considered that he must, if he
was telling the truth, have been misinformed in the same manner on two
separate occasions, it seemed much more probable that the story of the
voyage was a fabrication. In that case the journey to Falmouth—of
which no one but Varney had heard—was probably a fabrication, too.
This left Penzance as the apparent starting-point of the flight.
Purcell had certainly landed at Penzance and had forthwith disappeared
from view. What became of him thereafter it was impossible to guess.
He seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Arrived at this point, Thorndyke’s quietly reflective attitude
suddenly gave place to one of more intense attention. For a new and
somewhat startling question had presented itself. With an expression
of deep concentration, he set himself to consider it.
Hitherto he had accepted Purcell’s landing at Penzance as an
undeniable fact from which a secure departure could be taken. But was
it an undeniable fact? The only witness of that landing was Varney;
and Varney had shown himself a very unreliable witness. Apparently he
had lied about the Ipswich voyage; probably, too, about the visit to
Falmouth. What if the landing at Penzance were a fabrication, too? It
seemed a wild suggestion; but it was a possibility; and Thorndyke
proceeded carefully to develop the consequences that would follow if
it were true.
Suppose that Purcell had never landed at Penzance at all. Then several
circumstances hitherto incomprehensible became understandable. The
fables of Purcell’s appearance at Falmouth and Ipswich, which had
seemed to be motiveless falsehoods, now showed a clear purpose; which
was to create a certainty that Purcell had landed from the yacht as
stated and to shift the search for the missing man from Penzance to
Ipswich. Again, if Purcell had never landed at Penzance, the letter
could not have been posted by him and it became practically certain
that it must have been posted there by Varney and the transposition
made by him. And this made the transposition understandable by
developing a very evident purpose. When Penfield opened the letter and
when, later, he heard of Purcell’s disappearance, he would at once
assume that Purcell had absconded to avoid being arrested. The purpose
of the transposition, then, was to furnish a reasonable explanation of
a disappearance that had already occurred.
But what had become of Purcell? If he had not landed at Penzance, he
certainly had not landed anywhere else, for there had not been time
for the yacht to touch at any other port. Nor could it be supposed
that he had transhipped on to another vessel during the voyage. There
was no reason why he should. The letter had not been posted; and until
it had been posted, there was no reason for flight. The only
reasonable inference from the facts, including Varney’s false
statements, was that something had happened during the voyage from
Sennen; that Purcell had disappeared—presumably overboard—and that
Varney had reasons for concealing the circumstances of his
disappearance. In short, that Purcell was dead and that Varney was
responsible for his death.
It was an appalling theory. Thorndyke hardly dared even to propound it
to himself. But there was no denying that it fitted the facts with the
most surprising completeness. Once assume it to be true and all the
perplexing features of the case became consistent and understandable.
Not only did it explain Varney’s otherwise inexplicable anxiety to
prove that Purcell had been seen alive at a date subsequent to that of
the alleged landing at Penzance; it accounted for the facts that
Purcell had taken no measures to provide himself with a stock of cash
before disappearing and that he had made no communication of any sort
to his wife since his departure, though he could have done so with
perfect safety. It was in perfect agreement with all the known facts
and in disagreement with none. It was a complete solution of the
mystery; and there was no other.
When Thorndyke reached this conclusion, he roused himself from his
reverie, and, filling his pipe, took an impartial survey of the scheme
of circumstantial evidence that he had been engaged in constructing.
It was all very complete and consistent. There were, so far, no
discrepancies or contradictions. All the evidence pointed in the one
direction. The assumed actions of Varney were in complete agreement
with the circumstances that were known and the others that were
inferred as well as with the assumed motives. But it was largely
hypothetical and might turn out to be entirely illusory. If only one
of the assumed facts should prove to be untrue, the whole structure of
inference would come tumbling down. He took out of his pocketbook the
folded paper containing the single moustache hair that the
Superintendent had found in the Clifford’s Inn rooms. Laying it on a
sheet of white paper, he once more examined it, first through his
lens, then under the microscope, noting the length, thickness and
colour and mentally visualizing the kind of moustache from which it
had come. Here was an indispensable link in the chain of evidence. If
Purcell had had such a moustache, that would not prove that he and
Bromeswell were one and the same person, but it would be consistent
with their identity. But if Purcell had no such moustache, then it was
probable—indeed, nearly certain—that he and Bromeswell were different
persons. And if they were, the whole hypothetical scheme that he had
been working out collapsed. Both Purcell and Varney ceased to have any
connection with the forged notes; the mysterious “enclosures” could
not be of the nature that he had assumed; and all the deductions from
those assumed facts ceased to be valid. It was necessary without delay
to test this essential link; to ascertain whether this derelict hair
could have been derived from Daniel Purcell.
Enclosed with it was the slip of paper with the notes of the trains,
which he had, for the moment, forgotten. He now examined it minutely
and was once more struck by the intense blackness of the ink; and he
recalled that a similar intensity of blackness had been noticeable in
the address on Mr. Penfield’s envelope. It had appeared almost like
the black of a carbon ink, but he had decided that it was not. So it
was with the present specimen; but now he had the means of deciding
definitely. Fetching the microscope, he laid the paper on the stage
and examined it, first by reflected, then by transmitted light. The
examination made it clear that this was an iron-tannin ink of unusual
concentration with a “provisional” blue pigment—probably methyl blue.
There was only one letter—P—and this he tried to compare with the P on
Penfield’s envelope, so far as he could remember it, but he could not
get beyond a belief that there was a resemblance; a belief that would
have to be tested by a specimen of Purcell’s handwriting.
Having finished with the paper he returned to the hair. He decided to
write to Margaret, asking for a description of her missing husband,
and had just reached out to the stationery case when an elaborate and
formal tattoo on the small brass knocker of the inner door arrested
him. Rising, he crossed the room and threw the door open, thereby
disclosing the dorsal aspect of a small, elderly gentleman. As the
door opened the visitor turned about and Thorndyke immediately, not
without surprise, recognized him. It was Mr. Penfield.