I
This was a case that helped to give Dorrington much of that reputation
which unfortunately too often enabled him to profit himself far beyond
the extent to which his clients intended. It occurred some few years
back, and there was such a stir at the time over the mysterious death
of Mr. Loftus Deacon that it well paid Dorrington to use his utmost
diligence in an honest effort to uncover the mystery. It gave him
one of his best advertisements, though indeed it occasioned him less
trouble in the unravelling than many a less interesting case. There
were scarcely any memoranda of the affair among Dorrington's papers,
beyond entries of fees paid, and I have almost entirely relied upon
the account given me by Mr. Stone, manager in the employ of the firm
owning the premises in which Mr. Deacon died.
These premises consisted of a large building let out in expensive
flats, one of the first places built with that design in the West-End
of London. The building was one of three, all belonging to the firm I
have mentioned, and numbered 1, 2 and 3, Bedford Mansions. They stood
in the St. James's district, and Mr. Loftus Deacon's quarters were in
No. 2.
Mr. Deacon's magnificent collection of oriental porcelain will be
remembered as long as any in the national depositories; much of it was
for a long while lent, and, by Mr. Deacon's will, passed permanently
into possession of the nation. His collection of oriental arms,
however, was broken up and sold, as were also his other innumerable
objects of Eastern art--lacquers, carvings, and so forth. He was a
wealthy man, this Mr. Deacon, a bachelor of sixty, and his whole life
was given to his collections. He was currently reported to spend some
£15,000 a year on them, and, in addition, would make inroads into
capital for special purchases at the great sales. People wondered
where all the things were kept. And indeed they had reason, for
Mr. Deacon's personal establishment was but a suite of rooms on the
ground floor of Bedford Mansions. But the bulk of the collections were
housed at various museums--indeed it was a matter of banter among his
acquaintances that Mr. Loftus Deacon made the taxpayers warehouse most
of his things; moreover, the flat was a large one--it occupied almost
the whole of the ground-floor of the building, and it overflowed with
the choicest of its tenant's possessions. There were eight large and
lofty rooms, as well as the lobby, scullery and so forth, and every
one was full. The walls were hung with the most precious _kakemono_
and _nishikiyé_ of Japan; and glass cabinets stood everywhere, packed
with porcelain and faience--celadon, peach-bloom, and blue and white,
Satsuma, Raku, Ninsei, and Arita--many a small piece worth its weight
in gold over and over and over again. At places on the wall, among
the _kakemono_ and pictures of the _ukioyé_, were trophies of arms.
Two suits of ancient Japanese armour, each complete and each the
production of one of the most eminent of the Miochin family, were
exhibited on stands, and swords stood in many corners and lay in
many racks. Innumerable drawers contained specimens of the greatest
lacquer ware of Korin, Shunsho, Kajikawa, Koyetsu, and Ritsuo, each
in its wadded brocade _fukusa_ with the light wooden box encasing
all. In more glass cabinets stood _netsuké_ and _okimono_ of ivory,
bronze, wood, and lacquer. There were a few gods and goddesses, and
conspicuous among them two life-sized gilt Buddhas beamed mildly over
all from the shelves on which they were raised. By the operation of
natural selection it came about that the choicest of all Mr. Deacon's
possessions were collected in these rooms. Here were none of the great
cumbersome pots, good in their way, but made of old time merely for the
European market. Of all that was Japanese every piece was of the best
and rarest, consequently, in almost every case, of small dimensions, as
is the way of the greatest of the wares of old Japan. And of all the
precious contents of these rooms everything was oriental in its origin
except the contents of one case, which displayed specimens of the most
magnificent goldsmiths' and silver-smiths' work of mediæval Europe. It
stood in the room which Mr. Loftus Deacon used as his sitting-room, and
more than one of his visitors had wondered that such valuable property
was not kept at a banker's. This view, however, always surprised and
irritated Mr. Deacon. "Keep it at a banker's?" he would say. "Why not
melt it down at once? The things are works of art, things of beauty,
and that's why I have them, not merely because they're gold and silver.
To shut them up in a strong-room would be the next thing to destroying
them altogether. Why not lock the whole of my collections in safes, and
never look at them? They are all valuable. But if they are not to be
seen I would rather have the money they cost." So the gold and silver
stood in its case, to the blinking wonderment of messengers and porters
whose errands took them into Mr. Loftus Deacon's sitting-room. The
contents of this case were the only occasion, however, of Mr. Deacon's
straying from oriental paths in building up his collection. There they
stood, but he made no attempt to add to them. He went about his daily
hunting, bargaining, cataloguing, cleaning, and exhibiting to friends,
but all his new treasures were from the East, and most were Japanese.
His chief visitors were travelling buyers of curiosities; little
Japanese who had come to England to study medicine and were paying
their terms by the sale of heirlooms in pottery and lacquer; porters
from Christie's and Foster's; and sometimes men from Copleston's--the
odd emporium by the riverside where lions and monkeys, porcelain and
savage weapons were bought and sold close by the ships that brought
them home. The travellers were suspicious and cunning; the Japanese
were bright, polite, and dignified, and the men from Copleston's were
wiry, hairy and amphibious; one was an enormously muscular little
hunchback nicknamed Slackjaw--a quaint and rather repulsive compound of
showman, sailor and half-caste rough; and all were like mermen, more
or less. These curious people came and went, and Mr. Deacon went on
buying, cataloguing, and joying in his possessions. It was the happiest
possible life for a lonely old man with his tastes and his means of
gratifying them, and it went placidly on till one Wednesday mid-day.
Then Mr. Deacon was found dead in his rooms in most extraordinary and,
it seemed, altogether unaccountable circumstances.
There was but one door leading into Mr. Deacon's rooms from the open
corridor of the building, and this was immediately opposite the large
street door. When one entered from the street one ascended three or
four broad marble steps, pushed open one of a pair of glazed swing
doors and found oneself facing the door by which Mr. Deacon entered
and left his quarters. There had originally been other doors into
the corridor from some of the rooms, but those Mr. Deacon had had
blocked up, so making the flat entirely self-contained. Just by the
glazed swing doors which I have spoken of, and in full view of the
old gentleman's door, the hall-porter's box stood. It was glazed on
all sides, and the porter sat so that Mr. Deacon's door was always
before his eyes, and, so long as he was there, it was very unlikely
that anybody or anything could leave or enter by that door unobserved
by him. It is important to remember this, in view of what happened on
the occasion I am writing of. There was one other exterior door to Mr.
Deacon's flat, and one only. It gave upon the back spiral staircase,
and was usually kept locked. This staircase had no outlet to the
corridors, but merely extended from the housekeeper's rooms at the top
of the building to the basement. It was little used, and then only by
servants, for it gave access only to the rooms on its own side. There
was no way from this staircase to the outer street except through the
private rooms of the tenants, or through those of the housekeeper.
That Wednesday morning things had happened precisely in the ordinary
way. Mr. Deacon had risen and breakfasted as usual. He was alone, with
his newspaper and his morning letters, when his breakfast was taken
in and when it was removed. He had remained in his rooms till between
twelve and one o'clock. Goods had arrived for him (this was an almost
daily occurrence), and one or two ordinary visitors had called and
gone away again. It was Mr. Deacon's habit to lunch at his club, and
at about a quarter to one, or thereabout, he had come out, locked his
door, and leaving his usual message that he should be at the club for
an hour or two, in case anybody called, he had left the building. At
about one, however, he had returned hurriedly, having forgotten some
letters. "I didn't give you any letters for the post, did I, Beard,
before I went out?" he asked the porter. And the porter replied that he
had not. Mr. Deacon thereupon crossed the corridor, entered his door,
and shut it behind him.
He had been gone but a few seconds, when there arose an outcry from
within the rooms--a shout followed in a breath by a loud cry of pain,
and then silence. Beard, the porter, ran to the door and knocked, but
there was no reply. "Did you call, sir?" he shouted, and knocked again,
but still without response. The door was shut, and it had a latch lock
with no exterior handle. Beard, who had had an uncle die of apoplexy,
was now thoroughly alarmed, and shouted up the speaking-tube for the
housekeeper's keys. In course of a few minutes they were brought, and
Beard and the housekeeper entered.
The lobby was as usual, and the sitting-room was in perfect order. But
in the room beyond Mr. Loftus Deacon lay in a pool of blood, with two
large and fearful gashes in his head. Not a soul was in any of the
rooms, though the two men, first shutting the outer door, searched
diligently. All windows and doors were shut, and the rooms were
tenantless and undisturbed, except that on the floor lay Mr. Deacon
in his blood at the foot of a pedestal whereupon there squatted, with
serenely fierce grin, the god Hachiman, gilt and painted, carrying in
one of his four hands a snake, in another a mace, in a third a small
human figure, and in the fourth a heavy, straight, guardless sword; and
all around furniture, cabinets, porcelain, lacquer and everything else
lay undisturbed.
At first sight of the tragedy the porter had sent the lift-man for
the police, and soon they arrived, and a surgeon with them. For the
surgeon there was very little to do. Mr. Deacon was dead. Either of the
two frightful gashes in the head would have been fatal, and they had
obviously both been delivered with the same instrument--something heavy
and exceedingly sharp.
The police now set themselves to close investigation. The porter was
certain that nobody had entered the rooms that morning who had not
afterwards left. He was sure that nobody had entered unobserved, and
he was sure that Mr. Deacon had re-entered his chambers unaccompanied.
Working, therefore, on the assumption that the murderer could not
have entered by the front door, the police turned their attention
to the back door and the windows. The door to the back staircase
was locked, and the key was in the lock and inside. Therefore they
considered the windows. There were but three of these that looked upon
the street, two in one room and one in another, but these were shut
and fastened within. Other rooms were lighted by windows looking upon
lighting-wells, some being supplied with reflectors. All these windows
were found to be quite undisturbed, and fastened within, except one.
This window was in the bedroom, and, though it was shut, the catch was
not fastened. The porter declared that it was Mr. Deacon's practice
invariably to fasten every shut window, a thing he was always very
careful about. Moreover, the window now found unfastened and shut was
always left open a foot or so all day, to air the bedroom. More, a
housemaid was brought who had that morning made the bed and dusted the
room. The window was opened, she said, when she had entered the room,
and she had left it so, as she always did. Therefore, shut as it was,
but not fastened, it seemed plain that this window must have given exit
to the murderer, since no other way appeared possible. Also, to shut
the window behind him would be the fugitive's natural policy. The lower
panes were of ground glass, and at least pursuit would be delayed.
The window looked upon a lighting-well, and the concreted floor of
the basement was but fifteen or twenty feet below. Careful inquiries
disclosed the fact that a man had been at work painting the joinery
about this well-bottom. He was a man of very indifferent character--had
in fact "done time"--and he was employed for odd jobs by way of
charity, being some sort of connection of a member of the firm owning
the buildings. He had, indeed, received a good education, fitted to
place him in a very different position from that in which he now found
himself, but he was a black sheep. He drank, he gambled, and finally
he stole. His relatives helped him again and again, but their efforts
were useless, and now he was indebted to one of them for his present
occupation at a pound a week. The police, of course, knew something of
him, and postponed questioning him directly until they had investigated
a little further. It might be that Mr. Deacon's death was the work of a
conspiracy wherein more than one had participated.