Bailey. He was a middle-aged man, heavy-faced, and evidently knocked
half stupid by the situation in which he found himself. He was perhaps
as great a fool to his own interests as one might often meet with.
There was no getting the simplest tale out of him except by regular
question-and-answer cross-examination. What little he did tell seemed
rather to confirm his guilt than otherwise; though, strange to say, I
was beginning to believe him when he kept on assuring me between every
other sentence that he did not commit the murder. Perhaps it was the
stolid earnestness of the fellow in denying the crime which convinced
me. One gets to read a good deal from facial expression when a man has
watched what goes on in the criminal dock as long as I have done; and
one can usually spot guilt under any mask.
"'But tell me,' I said, 'what did you quarrel about in the first
instance?'
"'Money,' said Guide, moodily.
"'That's vague. Tell me more. Did he owe you money?'
"'No, sir, it was t'other way on.'
"'Wages in arrear?'
"'No, it was money he had advanced me for the working of my business.
You see Walker had always been a hard man, and he'd saved. He said he
wanted his money back, he knowing that I was pinched a bit just then
and couldn't pay. Then he tried to thrust himself into partnership with
me in the business, which was a thing I didn't want. I'd good contracts
on hand which I expected would bring me in a matter of nine thousand
pounds, and I didn't want to share it with any man, least of all him. I
told him so, and that's how the trouble began. But it was him that hit
me first.'
[Illustration: "HE KEPT ON ASSURING ME THAT HE DIDN'T COMMIT THE
MURDER."]
"'Still, you returned the blow?'
"Guide passed a hand wearily over his forehead. 'I may have struck him
back, sir--I was dazed, and I don't rightly remember. But before God
I'll swear that I never lifted that pick to Andrew Walker--it was his
pick.'
"'But,' I persisted, "Walker couldn't very conveniently have murdered
himself.'
"'No, sir, no--no, he couldn't. I thought of that myself since I been
in here, and I said to Mr. Barnes that perhaps somebody come into the
carriage when I was knocked silly, and killed him; but Mr. Barnes he
said that was absurd. Besides, who could have done it?'
"'Don't you know anybody, then, who would have wished for Walker's
death?'
"'There was them that didn't like him,' said Guide, drearily.
"That was all I could get out of him, and I went away from the prison
feeling very dissatisfied. I was stronger than ever in the belief that
Guide was in no degree guilty, and yet for the life of me I did not
see how to prove his innocence. He had not been a man of any strong
character to begin with, and the shock of what he had gone through had
utterly dazed him. It was hopeless to expect any reasonable explanation
from him; he had resigned himself to puzzlement. If he had gone
melancholy mad before he came up to trial, I should not have been one
whit surprised.
"I brooded over the matter for a couple of days, putting all the rest
of my practice out of thought, but I didn't get any forwarder with it.
I hate to give anything up as a bad job, and in this case I felt that
there was on my shoulders a huge load of responsibility. Guide, I had
thoroughly persuaded myself, had not murdered Andrew Walker; as sure as
the case went into court, on its present grounding, the man would be
hanged out of hand; and I persuaded myself that then I, and I alone,
should be responsible for an innocent man's death.
"At the end of those two days only one course seemed open to me. It was
foreign to the brief I held, but the only method left to bring in my
client's innocence.
"I must find out who did really murder the man. I must try to implicate
some third actor in the tragedy.
"To begin with, there was the railway carriage; but a little thought
showed me that nothing was to be done there. The compartment would have
been inspected by the police, and then swept and cleaned and garnished,
and coupled on to its train once more, and used by unconscious
passengers for weeks since the uproar occurred in it.
"All that I had got to go upon were the notes and relics held at
Scotland Yard.
"The police authorities were very good. Of course, they were keen
enough to bring off the prosecution with professional _éclat_; but they
were not exactly anxious to hand over a poor wretch to the hangman if
he was not thoroughly deserving of a dance on nothing. They placed at
my disposal every scrap of their evidence, and said that they thought
the reading of it all was plain beyond dispute. I thought so, too, at
first. They sent an inspector to my chambers as their envoy.
"On one point, though, after a lot of thought, I did not quite agree
with them. I held a grisly relic in my hand, gazing at it fixedly. It
was a portion of Walker's skull--a disc of dry bone with a splintered
aperture in the middle.
"'And so you think the pickaxe made that hole,' I said to the inspector.
[Illustration: "'YOU THINK THE PICKAXE MADE THAT HOLE,' I SAID TO THE
INSPECTOR."]
"'I don't think there can be any doubt about it, Mr Grayson. Nothing
else could have done it, and the point of the pick was smeared with
blood.'
"'But would there be room to swing such a weapon in a third-class
Metropolitan railway carriage?'
"'We thought of that, and at first it seemed a poser. The roof is low,
and both Guide and Walker are tall men; but if Guide had gripped the
shaft by the end, so, with his right hand pretty near against the head,
so, he'd have had heaps of room to drive it with a sideways swing. I
tried the thing for myself; it acted perfectly. Here's the pickaxe: you
can see for yourself.'
"I did see, and I wasn't satisfied; but I didn't tell the inspector
what I thought. It was clearer to me than ever that Guide had not
committed the murder. What I asked the inspector was this: 'Had either
of the men got any luggage in the carriage?'
"The inspector answered, with a laugh, 'Not quite, Mr. Grayson, or you
would see it here.'
"Then I took on paper a rough outline of that fragment of bone, and an
accurate sketch of exact size of the gash in it, and the inspector went
away. One thing his visit had shown me. Andrew Walker was not slain by
a blow from behind by the pickaxe.
"I met Barnes whilst I was nibbling lunch, and told him this. He heard
me doubtfully. 'You may be right,' said he, 'but I'm bothered if I see
what you have to go upon.'
"'You know what a pickaxe is like?' I said.
"'Certainly.'
"'A cross-section of one of the blades would be what?'
"'Square--or perhaps oblong.'
"'Quite so. Rectangular. What I want to get at is this: it wouldn't
even be diamond shape, with the angles obtuse and acute alternately.'
"'Certainly not. The angles would be clean right-angles.'
"'Very good. Now look at this sketch of the hole in the skull, and tell
me what you see.'
"Barnes put on his glasses, and gazed attentively for a minute or so,
and then looked up. 'The pick point has crashed through without leaving
any marks of its edges whatever.'
"'That is to say, there are none of your right-angles showing.'
"'None. But that does not go to prove anything.'
"'No. It's only about a tenth of my proof. It gives the vague initial
idea. It made me look more carefully, and I saw this'--I pointed with
my pencil to a corner of the sketch.
"Barnes whistled. 'A clean arc of a circle,' said he, 'cut in the bone
as though a knife had done it. You saw that pickaxe. Was it much worn?
Were the angles much rounded near the point?'
"'They were not. On the contrary, the pick, though an old one, had just
been through the blacksmith's shop to be re-sharpened, and had not
been used since. There was not a trace of wear upon it: of that I am
certain.'
"Barnes whistled again in much perplexity. At length said he, 'It's an
absolutely certain thing that Walker was not killed in the way they
imagine. But I don't think this will get Guide off scot-free. There's
too much other circumstantial evidence against him. Of course you'll do
your best, but----'
"'It would be more than a toss up if I could avoid a conviction. Quite
so. We must find out more. The question is, how was this wound made?
Was there a third man in it?'
[Illustration: "LOOK AT THIS SKETCH OF THE HOLE IN THE SKULL."]
"'Guide may have jobbed him from behind with some other instrument, and
afterwards thrown it out of window.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'but that is going on the assumption that Guide did
the trick, which I don't for a moment think is the case. Besides, if
he did throw anything out of window, it would most assuredly have been
found. They keep the permanent way very thoroughly inspected upon the
Metropolitan. No, Barnes. There is some other agent in this case,
animate or inanimate, which so far we have overlooked completely; and
an innocent man's life depends upon our ravelling it out.'
"Barnes lifted his shoulders helplessly, and took another sandwich. 'I
don't see what we can do.'
"'Nor I, very clearly. But we must start from the commencement, and go
over the ground inch by inch.'
"So wrapped up was I in the case by this time, that I could not fix
my mind to anything else. Then and there I went out and set about my
inquiries.
"With some trouble I found the compartment in which the tragedy had
taken place, but learnt nothing new from it. The station and the
railway people at Addison Road, Kensington, were similarly drawn blank.
The ticket inspector at Shaftesbury Road, who distinctly remembered
Guide's passage, at first seemed inclined to tell me nothing new, till
I dragged it out of him by a regular emetic of questioning.
"Then he did remember that Guide had been carrying in his hand a
carpenter's straw bass, as he passed through the wicket. He did not
recollect whether he had mentioned this to the police: didn't see that
it mattered.
"I thought differently, and with a new vague hope in my heart, posted
back to the prison. I had heard no word of this hand-baggage from
Guide. It remained to be seen what he had done with it.
"They remembered me from my previous visit, and let me in to the
prisoner without much demur. Guide owned up to the basket at once.
'Yes,' he said, 'I had some few odd tools to carry from home, and as
I couldn't find anything else handy to put them in I used the old
carpenter's bass. I had an iron eye to splice on to the end of a
windlass rope, a job that I like to do myself, to make sure it's done
safe. I never thought about telling you of that bass before, sir. I
didn't see as how it mattered.'
"'Where is the bass now?'
"'In the Left Luggage Office at Shaftesbury Road Station. Name of
Hopkins. I've lost the ticket.'
"'Where did you put your basket on entering the carriage at Addison
Road?'
"'On the seat, sir, in the corner by the window.'
"And with that I left him.
"'Now,' thought I, 'I believe I can find out whether you murdered
Walker or not,' and drove back to Hammersmith.
[Illustration: "A DISCOLORATION WHICH I KNEW TO BE DRIED HUMAN BLOOD."]
"I inquired at the cloak-room. Yes, the carpenter's bass was there,
beneath a dusty heap of other unclaimed luggage. There was demurrage
to pay on it, which I offered promptly to hand over, but as I could
produce no counterfoil bearing the name of Hopkins, the clerk, with a
smile, said that he could not let me have it. However, when he heard
what I wanted, he made no objection to my having an overhaul.
"The two lugs of the bass were threaded together with a hammer. I took
this away, and opened the sides. Within was a ball of marline, another
of spun-yarn, a grease-pot, and several large iron eyes. Also a large
marline-spike. It was this last that fixed my attention. It was brand
new, with a bone handle and a bright brass ferrule. Most of the iron
also was bright, but three inches of the point were stained with a
faint dark brown. From a casual inspection I should have put this down
to the marline-spike having been last used to make a splice on tarred
rope; but now my suspicions made me think of something else.
"I raised the stained point to my nose. There was no smell of tar
whatever. On the bright part there was the indefinable odour of iron;
at the tip, that thin coat of dark brown varnish had blotted this scent
completely away.
"I think my fingers trembled when I turned to the bass again.
"Yes, there, opposite to where the point of the marline-spike had been
lying--it was tilted up over the ball of spun-yarn--was a closed-up
gash in the side of the bass. The spike had passed through there, and
then been withdrawn. Round the gash was a dim discoloration which I
knew to be dried human blood.
"In my mind's eye I saw the whole ghastly accident clearly enough now.
The two men had been standing up, struggling. Guide had gone down under
a blow, knocked senseless, and Walker had stumbled over him. Pitching
forward, face downwards, on to the seat before he could recover, his
head had dashed violently against the carpenter's bass. The sharp
marline-spike inside, with its heel resting against the solid wall of
the carriage, had entered the top of his skull like a bayonet. No human
hand had been raised against him, and yet he had been killed.
"I kept my own particular ramblings in this case remarkably quiet, and
in court led up to my facts through ordinary cross-examination.
"At the proper psychological moment I called attention to the shape of
the puncture in Walker's skull, and then dramatically sprang the bass
and the marline-spike upon them unawares. After that, as the papers put
it, 'there was applause in court, which was instantly suppressed.'"
"Oh, the conceit of the man," said O'Malley, laughing.
Grayson laughed too. "Well," he said, "I was younger then, and I
suppose I was a trifle conceited. The Crown didn't throw up. But the
jury chucked us a 'Not guilty' without leaving the box, and then
leading counsel for the other side came across and congratulated me
on having saved Guide from the gallows. 'Now I'd have bet anything on
hanging that man,' said he."
[Illustration: "I'D HAVE BET ANYTHING ON HANGING THAT MAN."]
SOME INCRIMINATING DOCUMENTS.
FACSIMILES OF FATAL WRITINGS.
Incrimination by handwriting, if not as old as crime itself, is at
least, in all probability, as old as the art of writing. Whenever there
exists a manual record of a misdeed, there is naturally always the risk
of betrayal. In truth, there could be no safer motto for the criminal
than the words of Napoleon to Fouché: "Certain people should _never
write_; pen and ink are sure to undo them."
An illustrious example of incrimination by document has been recently
furnished to the world by the Dreyfus case, with its subsequent
complications, so that the present consideration of documents which
have played an equally strong part in bringing evil-doers to justice
cannot fail to be most interesting.
The public have, probably, not yet forgotten the unique circumstances
of the Whalley will case.
[Illustration: FAMOUS FORGED WILL.]
[Illustration: DIARY WHICH LED TO THE SCAFFOLD]
[Illustration: SIGNATURE OF THE REAL SIR ROGER.]
[Illustration: SIGNATURE OF THE CLAIMANT.]
It appears that sixteen or seventeen years ago an elderly gentleman
named James Whalley was living at Leominster. He passed his days at the
home of a man named Thomas, a petty municipal functionary, leading a
decidedly frugal, not to say miserly, life. Whalley had two children,
Emma and Henry Whalley Priestman, whom he educated and lived with
until about the year 1877, when he quarrelled with his daughter and
left her and her brother at Hereford, he himself going to live at
Thomas's cottage at Leominster. On the seventh of May 1881, he died,
leaving between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. A will was produced,
bearing the old man's indubitable signature, as well as the signature
of witnesses, in which the bulk of the fortune was left to Thomas, the
son being cut off with £5,000. Everything seemed plain and above-board,
but certain circumstances were suspicious, and the document was
contested. This famous will, of which a photograph has been specially
taken for the present article, was brought into court and submitted to
the scrutiny of experts, accustomed to detect the most minute flaws
in the work of the cleverest forger. They were obliged to give it
as their opinion that the signatures were all genuine--the document
itself being in the hand of one of the attesting witnesses. But when
it came to examining the will carefully as a whole, it was found by
one expert that there was cause for suspicion. The attesting clauses
were rather curiously cramped at the side, giving from their position
the idea to the expert's mind that they had been added subsequently,
with a view to accommodating the signature. The signature itself,
too, had a date under it, a peculiarity of the testator's in writing
a letter, but never found elsewhere. The lines varied, too, as though
the writer had begun in the belief that there had been ample room.
Everything now seemed to point to the fact of a will written over and
around a signature, and not to a signature naturally written at the
bottom of a will. Meanwhile, there had appeared in different parts of
the paper certain odd marks and formations. Early in the inquiry the
will had been glazed and framed; and now left to itself the paper, as
it were, began to speak and declare itself other than what it seemed.
Soon these marks and formations took the shape of words and fragments
of words, and by a powerful magnifying glass could even be read. It
was now sufficiently clear for the expert to declare that these were
hollows and shades caused by pencil marks made by one of the attesting
witnesses and principal legatee, and afterwards rubbed out.
[Illustration: MURDERER'S OFFER TO ACT AS DETECTIVE.]
It is a well-known fact, in connection with palimpsests, that time
will often recall a writing long believed to have been obliterated.
Erase the writing as carefully as is possible, till all trace of
pencil or pen has vanished, yet with most kinds of paper one will
really only have erased the immediate marks of the plumbago or ink.
The indentations on the paper will remain, merely filled up with
the dust and surface of the material rubbed over them. This is what
occurred here. The testator, it was proved at the subsequent trial,
believing himself to be _in extremis_, desired the presence of his son.
At his request the principal legatee had written for him the letter,
taking the precaution of writing it in pencil--being equally careful,
at the same time, that the signature should be in ink. The rest of
the proceeding was simple: the pencil was rubbed out, and over the
signature the will was written. It was proved that the will in which he
left almost the whole of his property to his son was done away with,
and Thomas and Nash were convicted.
The next document we present was produced by the public prosecutor in
court at the trial of William Palmer, the poisoner, in 1856. It is
a page from a diary discovered by the police among the guilty man's
effects at Rugeley. In this diary each of Palmer's numerous murders
was chronicled, together with most of the details of his personal
association with his victims, of whom John Parsons Cook was the last.
Having denied that he had been with Cook on the Sunday and Monday in
question, this diary, in the murderer's own handwriting, were other
evidences not forthcoming, convicted him of falsehood--and (on a
post-mortem examination, first of one victim and then another) of
murder. He expiated his crime at length on the scaffold.
[Illustration: LETTER FROM NEILL CREAM THE POISONER.]
But a more celebrated case than either of those we have yet mentioned
was that surrounding the claimant to the Tichborne estates. It is
almost needless to recapitulate the circumstances of this great action,
in which Arthur Orton, a butcher's apprentice, sought to pass himself
off as the long missing Roger Charles Tichborne. But throughout all the
sophistries by which Orton sought to strengthen his case there were
three documents which, in the jury's eyes, annulled all the efforts of
his counsel. These three documents consist of, first, the handwriting
of the real Sir Roger Charles Tichborne; second, of the man who
claimed to be he; and third, of Arthur Orton. A moment's glance, even
by those unpractised in the art of analysing and comparing handwriting,
sufficed to show that the hand which had written the "Arthur Orton"
letter was the same hand that had sent from the Metropolitan Hotel,
Sydney, the affectionate letter to Lady Tichborne. But as to any real
affinity between these letters and the admittedly genuine one signed by
"Roger Charles Tichborne" in 1852, there is none whatever.
There are two cases of recent celebrity which relate to wilful murder,
and in which documents played an important part. Few can have forgotten
the trial and conviction of Thomas Neill Cream. We publish photographs
of papers in the guilty man's handwriting which figured in that case.
This wretched man seems to have murdered his victims in order to
blackmail others for the crime. The first example is a letter to the
deputy-coroner, which reads like the epistle of a madman, but which
sheds considerable light on the methods Cream might adopt; the second
is a specimen of Cream's "backhand," in which he identifies himself
with the family of one of his victims.
[Illustration]
The second of the two cases mentioned is that of James Canham Read.
It will be recalled that in this murder trial a telegram was produced
which clinched the evidence against the prisoner by destroying his
contention of _alibi_. This telegram, which speaks for itself, is now
in the possession of the Scotland Yard authorities.
[Illustration: THE TELEGRAM THAT HANGED JAMES CANHAM READ.]
What we know now as an impudent forgery, but what was then regarded
by many as a terribly incriminating document, is the famous "Parnell
letter," published by the _Times_ in 1888. It would seem that the very
circumstance of the cramped writing at the bottom of the first page
would have aroused suspicion. The signature is, of course, genuine, Mr.
Parnell having written on a sheet of paper, without dreaming what use
was to be made of it by unscrupulous parties.
[Illustration: THE FORGED PARNELL LETTER.]
[Illustration:
A Tiny Shoe.
I.
Only a tiny outworn shoe
Tied with a ribbon that once was blue,
Filled with memories, hopes and fears,
Stealing back from the vanished years.
There it is lying, hidden away--
Where is the other?--who can say;
Odd as it is, and worn and old,
Somebody would not sell it for gold!
Only a little outworn shoe,
Tied with a ribbon that once was blue!
II.
Only a baby footfall light,
Making a dark world glad and bright,
Sweeter music than greatest art
Ever made, to a mother's heart!
Ah, that was twenty years away--
But though she blushed as a bride to-day,
To somebody, smiling her joy-tears through,
She still seemed the wearer of this wee shoe!
Only a little outworn shoe,
Tied with a ribbon that once was blue!]
IAN'S SACRIFICE.
A COMPLETE STORY BY ALICK MUNRO.
_Illustrations by Ralph Peacock._
It was a piece of insular facetiousness on my part which discovered
him; for one of the articles of every Briton's faith is that so long as
he speaks in English he can safely say what he likes to these foreign
beggars. Therefore, as this particular Portuguese had nipped my ticket
every morning for over a week, with never more than a murmured "_Com
licença, senhor_," when he avoided my outstretched legs, I thought our
acquaintance had lasted long enough to warrant my chaffing him--in
English, of course.
"Morning, Pedro!" I remarked, cheerfully, as I handed him my ticket;
"I'm quite getting to like the look of your ugly face, d'you know?"
The ticket-man gave me a quick glance.
"The pleasure is mutual, sir," he replied, quietly, speaking with a
slight Scotch accent; and then, with his usual "_Com licença_," reached
over for the rest of the tickets.
The other fellows, season-ticket holders on that line, burst out
laughing, and before I had time to realise the exact size of fool I'd
made of myself, the man had opened the door, and was making his way
along the foot-board to the next carriage. I jumped to the window and
looked after him, just in time to catch a slight smile on his wooden
face as he disappeared into the compartment.
"Well, I'm blessed!" I remarked to the others. "The fellow understands
English."
"Yes. Most Scotchmen do, you know," was the reply; and I felt smaller
than ever.
"Who is he?" I asked.