In Which Thorndyke Sees a New Light
“We shall only be three at dinner, after all,” said Margaret. “Mr.
Rodney will be detained somewhere, but he is coming in for a chat
later in the evening.”
Varney received the news without emotion. He could do without Rodney.
He would not have been desolated if the other guest had been a
defaulter, too. At any rate, he hoped that he would not be needlessly
punctual and thus shorten unduly the tête-à-tête with Margaret which
he—Varney—had secured by exercising the privilege of an old friend to
arrive considerably before his time.
“You have only met Dr. Thorndyke once before, I think?” said Margaret.
“Yes; at Sennen, you know; the day that queer letter came from Mr.
Penfield, and I didn’t see much of him then. I remember that I was a
little mystified about him; couldn’t quite make out whether he was a
lawyer, a doctor or a man of science.”
“As a matter of fact, he is all three. He is what is called a medical
jurist; a sort of lawyer who deals with legal cases that involve
medical questions. I understand that he is a great authority on
medical evidence.”
“What legal cases do involve medical questions?”
“I don’t know much about it,” replied Margaret, “but I believe they
include questions of survivorship and cases of presumption of death.”
“Presumption of death!” repeated Varney. “What on earth does that
mean?”
“I am not very clear about it myself,” she replied, “but from what I
am told, I gather that it is a sort of legal proceeding that takes
place when a person disappears permanently and there is uncertainty as
to whether he or she is dead or alive. An application is made to the
court for permission to presume that the person is dead; and if the
court gives the permission, the person is then legally presumed to be
dead and his will can be administered and his affairs wound up. That
is an instance of the kind of case that Dr. Thorndyke undertakes. He
must have had quite a lot of experience of persons who have
disappeared, and for that reason Mr. Rodney advised me to consult him
about Dan.”
“Do you mean with a view to presuming his death?” asked Varney,
inwardly anathematizing Dan for thus making his inevitable appearance
in the conversation, but keenly interested nevertheless.
“No,” replied Margaret. “I consulted him quite soon after Dan went
away. What I asked him to do was to find out, if possible, what had
become of him, and if he could discover his whereabouts, to get into
touch with him.”
“Well,” said Varney, “he doesn’t seem to have had much luck up to the
present. He hasn’t been able to trace Dan, has he?”
“No,” she replied; “at least, I suppose not. But we know where the
lost sheep is now. Had you heard about the letter?”
“The letter?”
“Yes. From Dan. He wrote to Mr. Penfield a few days ago.”
“Did he though?” said Varney with well-simulated surprise. “From
somewhere abroad, I suppose?”
“No. The post-mark was Woodbridge—there was no address;” and here
Margaret briefly explained the circumstances.
“It sounds rather as if he were afloat,” said Varney. “That is an
ideal coast for lurking about in a smallish yacht. There is endless
cover in the rivers and the creeks off the Colne, the Roach, the
Crouch and the Blackwater. But it looks as if he had made more
preparations for the flitting than we thought at the time. He hasn’t
written to you?”
Margaret shook her head. The affront was too gross for comment.
“It was beastly of him,” said Varney. “He might have sent you just a
line. However, Dr. Thorndyke will have something to go on now. He will
know whereabouts to look for him.”
“As far as I am concerned,” Margaret said coldly, “the affair is
finished. This insult was the last straw. I have no further interest
in him and I hope I may never see him again. But,” she added earnestly
after a brief pause, “I should like to be rid of him completely. I
want my freedom.” As she spoke—with unusual emphasis and energy—she
looked, for a moment, straight into Varney’s eyes. Then suddenly she
flushed scarlet and turned her head away.
Varney was literally overwhelmed. He felt the blood rush to his head
and tingle in the tips of his fingers. After one swift glance, he too
turned away his head. He did not dare to look at her. Nor, for some
seconds did he dare to trust his voice. At last it had come! In the
twinkling of an eye, his dim hopes, more than half distrusted, had
changed into realities. For there could be no doubt. That look into
his eyes, that sudden blush, what could they be but an unpremeditated,
unintended confession? She wanted her freedom. That unguarded glance
told him why; and then her mantling cheeks while they rebuked the
glance, but served to interpret its significance.
With an effort, he regained his normal manner. His natural delicacy
told him that he must not be too discerning. He must take no
cognizance of this confidence that was never intended. She must still
think that her secret was locked up in her own breast secure from
every eye—even from his.
And yet what a pitiful game of cross-purposes they were playing! She
wanted her freedom! And behold! she was free; and he knew it and could
not tell her. What a tangle it was! And how was it ever going to be
straightened out? In life, Purcell had stood between him and liberty;
and now the ghost—nay! less than the ghost. The mere unsubstantial
name of Purcell stood between him and a lifelong happiness that
Fortune was actually holding out to him.
It was clear that, sooner or later, the ghost of Purcell would have to
be laid. But how? And here it began to dawn upon him that the
ingenious letter, on which he had been congratulating himself, had
been a tactical mistake. He had not known about Dr. Thorndyke, and he
had never heard before of the possibility of presuming a person’s
death. He had been busying himself to produce convincing evidence that
Purcell was alive, whereas it was possible that Thorndyke had been
considering the chances of being able to presume his death. It was
rather a pity; for Purcell had got to be disposed of before he could
openly declare himself to Maggie; and this method of legal presumption
of death appeared to be the very one that suited the conditions. He
wished he had known about it before.
These reflections flashed through his mind in the silence that had
followed Margaret’s unguarded utterance. For the moment Varney had
been too overcome to reply. And Margaret suddenly fell silent with an
air of some confusion. Recovering himself, Varney now replied in a
tone of conventional sympathy.
“Of course you do. The bargain is off on the one side, and it is not
reasonable that it should hold on the other. You don’t want to be
shackled forever to a man who has gone out of your life. But I don’t
quite see what is to be done.”
“Neither do I,” said Margaret. “Perhaps the lawyers will be able to
make some suggestion—and I think I hear one of them arriving.”
A moment or two later the door opened and the housemaid announced “Dr.
Thorndyke.” Varney stood up, and as the guest was ushered in, he
looked with deep curiosity, not entirely unmingled with awe, at this
tall, imposing man who held in his mind so much recondite knowledge
and doubtless so many strange secrets.
“I think you know Mr. Varney,” said Margaret as she shook hands,
“though you hadn’t much opportunity to improve his acquaintance at
Sennen.”
“No,” Thorndyke agreed. “Mr. Penfield’s bombshell rather distracted
our attention from the social aspects of that gathering. However, we
are free from his malign influence this evening.”
“I am not sure that we are,” said Varney. “Mrs. Purcell tells me that
he has just produced another mysterious letter.”
“I shouldn’t call it mysterious,” said Thorndyke. “On the contrary, it
resolves the mystery. We now know, approximately, where Mr. Purcell
is.”
“Yes, it ought to be easy to get on his track now. That, I understand,
is what you have been trying to do. Do you propose to locate him more
exactly?”
“I see no reason for doing so,” replied Thorndyke. “His letter answers
Mr. Penfield’s purpose, which was to produce evidence that he is
alive. But his letter does raise certain questions that will have to
be considered. We shall hear what Mr. Rodney has to say on the
subject. He is coming to-night, isn’t he?”
“He is not coming to dinner,” said Margaret, “but he is going to drop
in later. There goes the gong. Shall we go into the dining room?”
Thorndyke held the door open and they crossed the corridor to the
pleasant little room beyond. As soon as they had taken their places at
the table, Margaret led off the conversation with a rather definite
change of subject. “Have you brought any of your work to show us, Mr.
Varney?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied; “I have brought one or two etchings that I don’t
think you have seen, and a couple of aquatints.”
“Aquatints,” said Margaret. “Isn’t that a new departure?”
“No. It is only a revival. I used to do a good deal of aquatint work,
but I have not done any for quite a long time until I attacked these
two. I like a change of method now and again. But I always come back
to etchings.”
“Do you work much with the dry point?” asked Thorndyke.
“Not the pure dry point,” was the reply. “Of course, I use it to do
finishing work on my etchings, but that is a different thing. I have
done very few dry points proper. I like the bitten line.”
“I suppose,” said Thorndyke, “an etcher rather looks down on
lithography.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Varney. “I don’t certainly. It is a fine
process and an autograph process, like etching and mezzotint. The
finished print is the artist’s own work, every bit of it, as much as
an oil painting.”
“Doesn’t the printer take some of the credit?” Thorndyke asked.
“I am assuming that the artist does his own printing. If he doesn’t, I
should not call him a lithographer. He is only a lithographic
draughtsman. When I used to work at lithography, I always did my own
printing. It is more than half the fun. I have the little press
still.”
“Then perhaps you will revive that process, too, one day?”
“I don’t think so,” Varney replied. “The flat surface of a lithograph
is rather unsatisfying after the rich raised lines of an etching. I
shall never go back to lithography, except, perhaps, for some odd
jobs;” and here a spirit of mischievous defiance impelled him to add,
“I did a little lithograph only the other day, but I didn’t keep it.
It was a crude little thing.”
Thorndyke noted the statement with a certain grim appreciation. In
spite of himself, he could not but like Varney; and this playful,
sporting attitude in respect of a capital crime appeared to him as a
new experience. It established him and Varney as opposing players in a
sort of grim and tragic game, and it confirmed him in certain opinions
that he had formed as to the antecedents and motives of the crime.
For, as to the reality of the crime he now had no doubt. The statement
that Varney had just made in all the insolence of his fancied security
had set the keystone on the edifice that Thorndyke had built up.
Circumstantial evidence has a cumulative quality. It advances by a
sort of geometrical progression in which each new fact multiplies the
weight of all the others. The theory that Varney had made away with
Purcell involved the assumption that Varney was a lithographer who was
able to print. It was now established that Varney was a lithographer
and that he owned a press. Thus the train of circumstantial evidence
was complete.
It was a most singular situation. In the long pauses which tend to
occur when good appetites coincide with a good dinner, the two men,
confronting one another across the table, sat, each busy with his
thoughts behind the closed shutters of his mind, each covertly
observant of the other and each the object of the other’s meditations.
To Varney had come once more that queer feeling of power that he had
experienced at Sennen when Mr. Penfield’s letter had arrived; the
sense of an almost godlike superiority and omniscience. Here were
these simple mortals, full of wonder, perplexity and speculation as to
the vanished Purcell. And they were all wrong. But he knew everything.
And he was the motive power behind all their ineffectual movements. It
was he who, by the pressure of a finger, had set this puppet-show in
motion; and he had but to tweak a string in his quiet studio and they
were all set dancing again. Every one of them was obedient to his
touch; Maggie, Penfield, Rodney, even this strong-faced, inscrutable
man whose eye he had just met; all of them were the puppets whose
movements, joint or separate, were directed by his guiding hand.
Thorndyke’s reflections were more complex. From time to time he
glanced at Varney—he was too good an observer to need to
stare—profoundly interested in his appearance. No man could look less
like a murderer than this typical artist with his refined face, dreamy
yet vivacious, and his suave, gentle manners. Yet that, apparently,
was what he was. Moreover, he was a forger of banknotes—perhaps of
other things, too, as suggested by the very expert production of this
letter—and had almost certainly uttered the forged notes. That was, so
to speak, the debit side of his moral account; and there was no
denying that it was a pretty heavy one.
On the other hand, he was evidently making a serious effort to earn an
honest living. His steady industry was clear proof of that. It was
totally unlike a genuine criminal to work hard and with enthusiasm for
a modest income. Yet that was what he was evidently doing. It was a
very singular contradiction. His present mode of life, which was
evidently adapted to his temperament, seemed totally irreconcilable
with his lurid past. There seemed to be two Varneys; the criminal
Varney, practising felonies and not stopping short of murder, and the
industrious, artistic Varney, absorbed in his art and content with the
modest returns that it yielded.
Which of them was the real Varney? As he debated this question,
Thorndyke turned to the consideration of the other partner in the
criminal firm. And this seemed to throw an appreciable light on the
question. Purcell had clearly been the senior partner. The initiative
must have been his. The starting-point of the banknote adventure must
have been the theft of the note-moulds at Maidstone. That had been
Purcell’s exploit; probably a lucky chance of which he had taken
instant advantage. But the moulds were of no use to him without an
engraver, so he had enlisted Varney’s help. Now, to what extent had
that help been willingly given?
It was, of course, impossible to say. But it was possible to form a
reasonable opinion by considering the characters of the two men. On
the one hand, Varney, a gentle, amiable, probably pliable man. On the
other, Purcell, a strong, masterful bully; brutal, selfish,
unscrupulous; ready to trample ruthlessly on any rights or interests
that conflicted with his own desires. That was, in effect, the picture
of him that his wife had painted—the wife whom he had married,
apparently against her inclination, by putting pressure on her father
who was his debtor. Purcell was a money-lender, a usurer; and even at
that, a hard case, as Mr. Levy’s observations seemed to hint. Now a
usurer has certain affinities with a blackmailer. Their methods are
somewhat similar. Both tend to fasten on their victim and bleed him
continuously. Both act by getting a hold on the victim and putting on
the screw when necessary; and both are characterized by a remorseless
egoism.
Now Purcell was clearly of the stuff of which blackmailers are made.
Was it possible that there was an element of blackmail in his
relations with Varney? The appearances strongly suggested it. Here
were two men jointly engaged in habitual crime. Suddenly one of them
is eliminated by the act of the other; and forthwith the survivor rids
himself of the means of repeating the crime and settles down to a life
of lawful industry. That was what had happened. The instant Varney had
got rid of Purcell, he had proceeded to get rid of the paper blanks by
sending them to Mr. Penfield, instead of printing them and turning
them into money; and by thus denouncing the firm, had made it
impossible, in any case, to continue the frauds. Then he had settled
down to regular work in his studio. That seemed to be the course of
events.
It was extremely suggestive. Purcell’s disappearance coincided with
the end of the criminal adventure and the beginning of a reputable
mode of life. That seemed to supply the motive for the murder—if it
had been a murder. It suggested that no escape from the life of crime
had been possible so long as Purcell was alive; that Purcell had
obtained some kind of hold on Varney which enabled him to compel the
latter to continue in the criminal partnership; and that Varney had
taken the only means that were possible to rid himself of his
parasite. That was what it looked like.
Of course this was mere guess-work. No proof was possible. But it
agreed with all the facts and it made Varney’s apparent dual
personality understandable. The real and essential Varney appeared to
be the artist, not the criminal. He appeared to be a normal man who
had committed a murder under exceptional circumstances. With the
bank-note business Thorndyke was not concerned and he had no knowledge
of its circumstances. But the murder was his concern and he set
himself to consider it.
The hypothesis was that Purcell had been, in effect, a blackmailer and
that Varney had been his victim. Now, it must be admitted that
Thorndyke held somewhat unconventional views on the subject of
blackmail. He considered that a blackmailer acts entirely at his own
risk and that the victim (since the law can afford him but a very
imperfect protection) is entitled to take any available measures for
his own protection, including the elimination of the blackmailer. But
if the blackmailer acts at his own risk, so does the victim who elects
to make away with him. Morally, the killing of a blackmailer may be
justifiable homicide, but it has no such legal status. In law,
self-defence means defence against bodily injury, it does not include
defence against moral injury. Whoever elects to rid himself of a
blackmailer by killing him accepts the risk of a conviction on a
charge of murder. But that appeared to be Varney’s position. He had
accepted the risk. It was for him to avoid the consequences if he
could. As to Thorndyke, himself, though he might, like the Clerk of
Arraigns at the Old Bailey, wish the offender “a good deliverance,”
his part was to lay bare the hidden facts. He and Varney were players
on opposite sides. He would play impersonally, without malice and with
a certain good will to his opponent. But he must play his own hand and
leave his opponent to do the same.
These reflections passed swiftly through his mind in the intervals of
a very desultory conversation. As he reached his conclusion, he once
more looked up at Varney. And then he received something like a shock.
At the moment no one was speaking, and Varney was sitting with his
eyes somewhat furtively fixed on Margaret’s downcast face. Now, to an
experienced observer, there is something perfectly unmistakable in the
expression with which a man looks at a woman with whom he is deeply in
love. And such was the expression that Thorndyke surprised on Varney’s
face. It was one of concentrated passion, of adoration.
Thorndyke was completely taken aback. This was an entirely new
situation, calling for a considerable revision of his conclusions and
also of his sympathies. An eliminated blackmailer is one thing;
Uriah’s wife is another and a very different one. Thorndyke was rather
puzzled, for though the previous hypothesis hung fairly together, it
was now weakened by the possibility that the murder had been committed
merely to remove a superfluous husband. Not that it made any practical
difference. He was concerned with the fact of Purcell’s murder. The
motives were no affair of his.
His reflections were interrupted by a question from Margaret.
“You haven’t been down to Cornwall, I suppose, since you came to see
us at Sennen in the summer?”
“No; I have not, but Professor D’Arcy has; and he is starting for
another trip at the end of next month.”
“Is he still in search of worms? It was worms that you were going to
look for, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, marine worms. But he is not fanatical on the subject. All marine
animals are fish that come to his net.”
“You are using the word net in a metaphorical sense, I presume,” said
Varney. “Or does he actually use a net?”
“Sometimes,” replied Thorndyke. “A good many specimens can be picked
up by searching the shore at low tide, but the most productive work is
done with the dredge. Many species are found only below low-water
mark.”
“Is there anything particularly interesting about marine worms?”
Margaret asked. “There always seems something rather disgusting about
a worm, but I suppose that is only vulgar prejudice.”
“It is principally unacquaintance with worms,” replied Thorndyke.
“They are a highly interesting group of animals, both in regard to
structure and habits. You ought to read Darwin’s fascinating book on
earth-worms and learn what an important part they play in the
fashioning of the earth’s surface. But the marine worms are not only
interesting; some of them are extraordinarily beautiful creatures.”
“That was what Phillip Rodney used to say,” said Margaret, “but we
didn’t believe him, and he never showed us any specimens.”
“I don’t know that he ever got any,” said Varney. “He made great
preparations in the way of bottles and jars, and then he spent most of
his time sailing his yacht or line-fishing from a lugger. The only
tangible result of his preparations was that remarkable jury button
that he fixed on Dan’s oilskin coat. You remember that button, Mrs.
Purcell?”
“I remember something about a button, but I have forgotten the
details. What was it?”
“Why, Dan lost the top button from his oiler and never got it
replaced. One day he lent the coat to Phillip to go home in the wet,
and as Phil was going out line-fishing the next day and his own oilers
were on the yacht, he thought he would take Dan’s. So he proceeded to
fix on a temporary button and a most remarkable job he made of it. It
seems that he hadn’t got either a button or a needle and thread, so he
extemporized. He took the cork out of one of his little collecting
bottles—it was a flat cork, waterproofed with paraffin wax, and it had
a round label inscribed ‘marine worms.’ Well, as he hadn’t a needle or
thread, he bored two holes through the cork with the little
marlinspike in his pocket-knife, passed through them the remains of a
fiddle-string that he had in his pocket, made two holes in the
oilskin, threaded the cat-gut through them and tied a reef-knot on the
inside.”
“And did it answer?” asked Margaret. “It sounds rather clumsy.”
“It answered perfectly. So well that it never got changed. It was on
the coat when Dan went up the ladder at Penzance, and it is probably
on it still. Dan seemed quite satisfied with it.”
There was a brief silence, during which Thorndyke looked down
thoughtfully at his plate. Presently he asked.
“Was the label over the wax or under it?”
Varney looked at him in surprise, as also did Margaret. What on earth
could it matter whether the label were over or under the wax?
“The label was under the wax,” the former replied. “I remember Phillip
mentioning the fact that the label was waterproof as well as the cork.
He made quite a point of it, though I didn’t see why. Do you?”
“If he regarded the label as a decorative adjunct,” replied Thorndyke,
“he would naturally make a point of the impossibility of its getting
washed off, which was the object of the waxing.”
“I suppose he would,” Varney agreed in an absent tone and still
looking curiously at Thorndyke. He had a feeling that the latter’s
mildly facetious reply was not quite “in key” with the very definite
question. Why had that question been asked? Had Thorndyke anything in
his mind? Probably not. What could he have? At any rate it was of no
consequence to him, Varney.
In which he was, perhaps, mistaken. Thorndyke had been deeply
interested in the history of the button. Here was one of those queer,
incalculable trivialities which so often crop up in the course of a
criminal trial. By this time, no doubt, that quaint button was
detached and drifting about in the sea, or lying unnoticed on some
lonely beach among the high-water jetsam. The mere cork would be
hardly recognizable, but if the label had been protected by the wax,
it would be identifiable with absolute certainty. And, if ever it
should be identified, its testimony would go to prove the
improbability that Daniel Purcell ever went ashore at Penzance.