DESCRIBES TWO INQUIRIES.
The fatal accident to Lieutenant Noel Barclay caused a wave of sympathy
throughout the country.
As a daring and experienced aviator he was well known. He had assisted
in the foundation of the Naval Flying School at Eastchurch, and had been
the first aviator to fly from land and greet the King on the occasion of
a great review off Weymouth. Many splendid feats of airmanship had he
accomplished, flying from Paris to London on three occasions, and going
far out to sea and back, scouting on one or other of the Government
hydroplanes.
Several important inventions were to his credit, and it had been due to
his genius that certain of the aircraft had been fitted with wireless
apparatus and experiments carried out with success. He had done
excellent service during the naval manoeuvres of the previous year,
and his name had been written large in the annals of aviation.
But alas! the public had one morning opened their daily papers to find a
tragic picture of his wrecked machine, and beneath was printed the news
of his fatal fall from a distance of eight hundred feet.
The inquest had been held at the Old Ship Hotel at Mundesley, the day
after the accident, and, in addition to representatives of the
Admiralty, a number of aviation experts who had examined the wreckage
had been present.
The inquiry was a searching one, for an important London newspaper had
hinted that, owing to the parsimonious policy of the Admiralty, certain
of their aeroplanes were not of the same stability as those owned by
private individuals. Hence the authorities at Whitehall had set
themselves to refute such damaging allegations.
To that quiet little fishing village had come some of the greatest
aviation experts, world-famous pilots, and representatives of that
select body whose dictum in all aviation is law--the Royal Aero Club.
And all were there with one object--to decide as to the reason of the
sudden collapse of the naval Bleriot.
The coroner sat in a stuffy little room, the windows of which were open.
Nevertheless, with the place crowded the atmosphere was oppressively
hot. The inquiry was long and tedious, for after evidence had been given
as to the lieutenant's departure, and eyewitnesses had described his
fall, there came a quantity of highly technical evidence put forward by
the Admiralty with the object of proving that the machine had been in a
perfectly satisfactory condition. The Gnome engine was of 80
horse-power, the monoplane had been thoroughly overhauled only four days
previously, and the flights which Barclay had made in her from
Eastchurch proved that there had been no defect which could have been
detected.
Curious it was that that inquiry was being held in the same hotel where
Ralph Ansell and Jean Libert had taken their tea.
One man alone knew the terrible truth--the man who, on that fatal
evening, had crept under the hedge unseen, and substituted the small
steel bolt with one of wood with such an expert, unerring hand--the man
who had stood up in the cab and calmly watched the awful result of his
evil handiwork without the slightest sign of pity or remorse.
He had hurled Noel Barclay to his death with as little compunction as he
would have crushed a fly. And yet little Jean, with the neat figure and
great, dark eyes, in her innocence and ignorance, loved him so dearly
and so well. She never dreamed the truth, and therefore he was her
ideal, while she was his affianced wife.
In that small, over-crowded room, clean-shaven experts stood up one
after the other, each expressing a different theory as to the cause of
the accident.
When poor Barclay had been found, the engine was lying upon his chest,
his neck was broken, his face battered out of all recognition, and both
arms were broken. So utterly wrecked was the machine that it presented
the appearance of a mass of splintered wood, tangled wires, and torn
strips of fabric flapping in the wind.
All had been examined carefully, piece by piece, after the mangled
remains of the unfortunate pilot had been extricated. The bolt was
missing and search failed to find it. A quantity of evidence was
forthcoming, and many theories advanced, the conclusion arrived at being
that the left wing collapsed owing to undue strain, and the machine,
instantly out of control, fell to earth.
There was but one verdict which the twelve honest men of Mundesley could
return.
Expert evidence agreed that the quick-release at the end of one of the
stay-wires was faulty. The steel bolt holding the main-stay cable and
secured by a split-pin could not be found. It had evidently broken and
fallen out, so that the left wing, being thus unsupported, had collapsed
in mid-air.
And in face of these facts the jury returned a verdict of "Accidental
death."
This the public read next morning in their newspapers, together with
expressions of deep sympathy and declarations that the air was, as yet,
unconquered.
On the same day as the inquest was held upon the body of Lieutenant
Barclay, a coroner's inquiry was held at the little market-town of North
Walsham, which, though inland, is the relay for the telegraph-cables
diverging to Northern Europe, into the discovery on the highway of the
body of the motor-cyclist, Mr. Richard Harborne.
Held in a schoolroom near the railway station, public and witnesses sat
upon the school benches, while the coroner occupied the headmaster's
desk.
Again there was an array of witnesses, but from the first the crowd at
the back of the room scented mystery.
A carter of the village of Worstead, speaking in his broad Norfolk
brogue, described how he had discovered the body and had come into North
Walsham and told a constable.
"I was a coomin' into North Walsham wi' a load o' hay what I'd got from
Mr. Summers, o' Stalham, when just after I turned into the Norwich road
I saw sawmthin' a-lyin' in the ditch," he said slowly, while the
grey-haired deputy-coroner carefully wrote down his words.
"Well?" asked the official, looking up at the witness.
"Well, sir, I found it was 'im," the man replied.
"Who?"
"The gentleman what war killed."
"The deceased, you mean," said the coroner.
"Yes, sir. I went over and found 'im a-lyin' face downwards," was the
reply. "I thought 'e wor drunk at first, but when I see blood on the
road I knowed there'd been sawmthin' up. So I went over to 'im."
"In what position was the body when you discovered it?" the coroner
asked.
"'E wor a-lyin' with 'is feet in the water an' 'is 'ead in the brambles
like."
"As if he had fallen there?"
"No, sir. As if 'e'd been thrown into the side o' the road. There was
blood--a lot of it all alon' the road."
"What did you do?"
"Well, I pulled 'im out, and saw a nasty cut in 'is throat. So I drove
on to North Walsham and saw Mr. Bennet."
"Anything else?"
"No, sir, nawthin' else."
"Any juryman wish to ask a question?" inquired the coroner, looking
across at the twelve local taxpayers.
The foreman, a stout farmer, said:
"I'd like, sir, to ask the witness if the gentleman was dead when he
pulled him out of the ditch."
"Dead as mutton," was the witness's prompt reply.
"You think he was dead? He may not have been," the coroner remarked.
"Well, I put my 'and on 'is 'eart an' it didn't beat, sir."
"Very well," said the official holding the inquiry, "that will do."
Superintendent Bennet, of the Norfolk Constabulary, stationed at North
Walsham, gave evidence regarding the discovery. He described how the
previous witness had called at the police-station, and how they went out
in a light trap on the Norwich road together.
"I found deceased lying on the grass on the left side of the road close
to a telegraph post," he said, while a tall, grey-faced, well-dressed
man of forty-five, of a somewhat military appearance, who was seated at
the back of the room, leaned forward attentively to catch every word.
"The thorn bushes beside the ditch were broken down by the body
apparently being cast there. It was getting dusk when I arrived on the
spot, but I could clearly see traces of blood for about forty feet from
the ditch forward in the direction of Norwich."
"Then the body must have been carried back from the spot where the blow
was struck?"
"It was dragged back. A shower had fallen in the afternoon, and there
were distinct marks on the damp road where the heels of the deceased had
scraped along, and also the footmarks of the murderer."
At these words those present in court held their breath.
"Have you taken any action in regard to those footmarks?"
"I have not, sir. But the detectives from Norwich have," answered the
officer.
"Could you see the track of deceased's motor-cycle?"
"Quite plainly. The deceased apparently dismounted close to the spot
where the first trace of blood appeared, for there were marks of a
struggle. The gentleman must have been struck down and promptly flung
into the ditch, after which his assailant mounted the cycle and rode
off."
"Towards Norwich?"
"Yes, sir--in that direction."
The grey-faced man at the back of the room was now all attention. Upon
his countenance was a curious, intense look. The coroner noticed him,
and became puzzled, even suspicious. Nobody knew the man or why he was
present. Yet to him the death of Richard Harborne was, without a doubt,
of the very greatest concern.
More than once the coroner looked suddenly up from writing the
depositions, regarding him with covert glances. Though he had all the
appearance of a gentleman, yet there was about him a strange, almost
imperceptible air of the adventurer. A close observer would have noticed
that his clothes bore the cut of a foreign tailor--French or
Italian--and his boots were too long and pointed to be English. His
well-kept, white hands were the hands of a foreigner, long and pointed,
with nails trimmed to points, and upon his left wrist, concealed by his
round shirt-cuff secured by solitaires in place of links, he wore a gold
bangle which inside bore an inscription.
At times his grey, hard face was impassive and sphinx-like, yet to the
narrative of how Richard Harborne was discovered he listened with a rapt
attention it was impossible to conceal.
Yes, the coroner himself decided that there was an air of mystery
surrounding the stranger, and resolved to tell the police at the
conclusion of the inquiry.
Superintendent Bennet, in answer to further questions put by the
coroner, said:
"At Gordon's Farm, to which we carried the body, I searched the dead
man's pockets. From the Foreign Office passport I found, I learned the
name of the gentleman, and from some letters addressed to him at the
King's Head, at Beccles, I was soon able to ascertain by telephone that
he had been stopping there for some little time. Most of the letters
were private ones, but two of them were enclosed in double envelopes,
and written on plain paper without any address or any signature. They
were written in the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet. A post-office
telegraphist has seen them, and says that the letters are a jumble and
form no words, therefore they must be secret correspondence in code."
And he handed the two letters in question to the coroner, who examined
them with considerable curiosity, while the stranger at the back of the
court folded his arms suddenly and looked entirely unconcerned.
"I also found this," the superintendent went on, handing a piece of
tracing linen to the coroner. "As far as I can make out, it is a tracing
of some plan or other. But its actual significance I have been unable to
determine."
The coroner spread it out upon his writing-pad and looked at it with a
puzzled expression.
"Anything else?" he inquired.
"Yes, sir; this," and the officer produced the torn half of a man's
visiting-card.
"This is apparently part of one of the deceased's own cards," the
coroner remarked, holding it before him, while the court saw that it had
been torn across obliquely, leaving a jagged edge.
"He seems to have signed his name across the front of it, too, before it
was torn," he added.
"The piece of card was carefully preserved in the inside pocket of his
wallet," the inspector said. "On the back, sir, you will see it is
numbered '213 G.'"
The coroner turned it over and saw on the back the number and letter as
the police-officer had stated.
"There are three others, almost exactly similar," the inspector went on,
producing them carefully from an envelope. "They are numbered '103 F,'
'91 I,' and '321 G.'"
"Curious," remarked the coroner, taking them. "Very curious indeed. They
are all signed across, yet only half the card is preserved. They have
some secret significance without a doubt."
He glanced across at the stranger, but the face of the latter betrayed
no sign of further interest. Indeed, just at that moment, when the whole
court was on the tenterhooks of curiosity he looked as though bored by
the entire procedure.
"The deceased carried a Smith-Wesson hammerless revolver fully loaded,"
the officer added; "but he was so suddenly attacked, it seems, that he
had no time to draw it."
The detectives from Norwich who had the case in hand were not called to
give evidence, for obvious reasons, but Dr. Dennan, of North Walsham,
whom the police called, a short, white-haired, business-like little man,
stepped forward, was sworn, and deposed that when he saw the body at
Gordon's Farm, deceased had been dead nearly two hours.
"He was struck in the throat by some thin, sharp instrument--a deep
wound. The artery was severed, and death must have occurred within a
few minutes," he said. "Probably deceased could not speak. He certainly
could not have uttered a cry. The blade of the instrument was, I should
judge, only about half an inch wide, extremely keen, and tapered to a
fine point. Whoever struck the blow was, I am inclined to think,
possessed of some surgical knowledge. With Doctor Taylor, I made a
post-mortem yesterday and found everything normal. There were some
scratches and abrasions on the hands and face, but those were no doubt
due to the deceased having been flung into the brambles."
Again the grey-faced stranger craned his thin neck, listening to every
word as it fell from the doctor's lips.
And again the coroner noticed him--and wondered.