Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty
years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary
will case, "Bartley _v._ Bartley and others," which occupied the
Probate Court for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public
interest rarely accorded to any but the cases considered in the
other division of the same court. The case itself was noted for the
large quantity of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the
plaintiff's side--evidence that took the other party completely by
surprise, and overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair
will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the occasion of the sudden
rise to eminence, in their profession, of Messrs. Crellan, Hunt, and
Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff--a result due entirely to the
wonderful ability shown in this case of building up, apparently out
of nothing, a smashing weight of irresistible evidence. That the firm
has since maintained--indeed, enhanced--the position it then won for
itself, need scarcely be said here; its name is familiar to everybody.
But there are not many of the outside public who know that the credit
of the whole performance was primarily due to a young clerk in the
employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given charge of the seemingly
desperate task of collecting evidence in the case.
This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his
exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other
firm of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to
entice Hewitt to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he
determined to work independently for the future, having conceived the
idea of making a regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients
as might retain him, similar work to that he had just done, with such
conspicuous success, for Messrs. Crellan, Hunt, and Crellan. This was
the beginning of the private detective business of Martin Hewitt, and
his action at that time has been completely justified by the brilliant
professional successes he has since achieved.
His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and
he has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring
to carry out, himself, such of the many investigations offered him as
he could manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by
this policy, since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition
for his services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same
time, no man could know better how to employ casual assistance at the
right time.
Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt's system,
and as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system
beyond a judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in
detail a few of the more interesting of his cases, in order that the
public may judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt's
"ordinary faculties" as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not
a man who has made many friendships (this, probably, for professional
reasons), notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I
myself first made his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting
in a fire at the old house in which Hewitt's office was situated, and
in an upper floor of which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to
help in saving a quantity of extremely important papers relating to his
business, and, while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them
in an old wall-safe in one of my rooms, which the fire had scarcely
damaged.
The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a
rather close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of
his expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases,
however, as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form
from the particulars given me.
"I consider you, Brett," he said, addressing me, "the most remarkable
journalist alive. Not because you're particularly clever, you know;
because, between ourselves, I hope you'll admit you're not: but because
you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and
have never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business
secrets you may have become acquainted with. I'm afraid you're not so
enterprising a journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you
shall write something--if you think it worth while."
This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing
good-nature that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger
who thought of him only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets
and crimes. Indeed, the man had always as little of the aspect of the
conventional detective as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more
cordial or less observant in manner, although there was to be seen
a certain sharpness of the eye--which might, after all, only be the
twinkle of good-humour.
I _did_ think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt's
investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
* * * * *
At the head of the first flight of a dingy staircase leading up from
an ever-open portal in a street by the Strand stood a door, the dusty
ground-glass upper panel of which carried in its centre the single
word "Hewitt," while at its right-hand lower corner, in smaller
letters, "Clerk's Office" appeared. On a morning when the clerks in
the ground-floor offices had barely hung up their hats, a short,
well-dressed young man, wearing spectacles, hastening to open the dusty
door, ran into the arms of another man who suddenly issued from it.
[Illustration: MARTIN HEWITT.]
"I beg pardon," the first said. "Is this Hewitt's Detective Agency
Office?"
"Yes, I believe you will find it so," the other replied. He was a
stoutish, clean-shaven man, of middle height, and of a cheerful, round
countenance. "You'd better speak to the clerk."
In the little outer office the visitor was met by a sharp lad with
inky fingers, who presented him with a pen and a printed slip. The
printed slip having been filled with the visitor's name and present
business, and conveyed through an inner door, the lad reappeared with
an invitation to the private office. There, behind a writing-table, sat
the stoutish man himself, who had only just advised an appeal to the
clerk.
"Good morning, Mr. Lloyd--Mr. Vernon Lloyd," he said, affably, looking
again at the slip. "You'll excuse my care to start even with my
visitors--I must, you know. You come from Sir James Norris, I see."
"Yes; I am his secretary. I have only to ask you to go straight to
Lenton Croft at once, if you can, on very important business. Sir James
would have wired, but had not your precise address. Can you go by the
next train? Eleven-thirty is the first available from Paddington."
"Quite possibly. Do you know anything of the business?"
"It is a case of a robbery in the house, or, rather, I fancy, of
several robberies. Jewellery has been stolen from rooms occupied by
visitors to the Croft. The first case occurred some months ago--nearly
a year ago, in fact. Last night there was another. But I think you had
better get the details on the spot; Sir James has told me to telegraph
if you are coming, so that he may meet you himself at the station; and
I must hurry, as his drive to the station will be rather a long one.
Then I take it you will go, Mr. Hewitt? Twyford is the station."
"Yes, I shall come, and by the eleven-thirty. Are you going by that
train yourself?"
"No, I have several things to attend to now I am in town. Good morning;
I shall wire at once."
Mr. Martin Hewitt locked the drawer of his table and sent his clerk for
a cab.
At Twyford Station Sir James Norris was waiting with a dog-cart. Sir
James was a tall, florid man of fifty or thereabout, known away from
home as something of a county historian, and nearer his own parts as
a great supporter of the hunt, and a gentleman much troubled with
poachers. As soon as he and Hewitt had found one another, the baronet
hurried the detective into his dog-cart. "We've something over seven
miles to drive," he said, "and I can tell you all about this wretched
business as we go. That is why I came for you myself, and alone."
[Illustration: "SIR JAMES NORRIS WAS WAITING WITH A DOG-CART."]
Hewitt nodded.
"I have sent for you, as Lloyd probably told you, because of a robbery
at my place last evening. It appears, as far as I can guess, to be
one of three by the same hand, or by the same gang. Late yesterday
afternoon----"
"Pardon me, Sir James," Hewitt interrupted, "but I think I must ask
you to begin at the first robbery and tell me the whole tale in proper
order. It makes things clearer, and sets them in their proper shape."
"Very well. Eleven months ago, or thereabout, I had rather a large
party of visitors, and among them Colonel Heath and Mrs. Heath--the
lady being a relative of my own late wife. Colonel Heath has not been
long retired, you know--used to be political resident in an Indian
native State. Mrs. Heath had rather a good stock of jewellery of one
sort and another, about the most valuable piece being a bracelet
set with a particularly fine pearl--quite an exceptional pearl, in
fact--that had been one of a heap of presents from the Maharajah of his
State when Heath left India.
"It was a very noticeable bracelet, the gold setting being a mere
featherweight piece of native filigree work--almost too fragile to
trust on the wrist--and the pearl being, as I have said, of a size
and quality not often seen. Well, Heath and his wife arrived late one
evening, and after lunch the following day, most of the men being
off by themselves--shooting, I think--my daughter, my sister (who is
very often down here), and Mrs. Heath took it into their heads to go
walking--fern-hunting, and so on. My sister was rather long dressing,
and while they waited, my daughter went into Mrs. Heath's room, where
Mrs. Heath turned over all her treasures to show her--as women do, you
know. When my sister was at last ready they came straight away, leaving
the things littering about the room rather than stay longer to pack
them up. The bracelet, with other things, was on the dressing-table
then."
"One moment. As to the door?"
"They locked it. As they came away my daughter suggested turning the
key, as we had one or two new servants about."
"And the window?"
"That they left open, as I was going to tell you. Well, they went on
their walk and came back, with Lloyd (whom they had met somewhere)
carrying their ferns for them. It was dusk and almost dinner time. Mrs.
Heath went straight to her room, and--the bracelet was gone."
"Was the room disturbed?"
"Not a bit. Everything was precisely where it had been left, except the
bracelet. The door hadn't been tampered with, but of course the window
was open, as I have told you."
"You called the police, of course?"
"Yes, and had a man from Scotland Yard down in the morning. He
seemed a pretty smart fellow, and the first thing he noticed on the
dressing-table, within an inch or two of where the bracelet had been,
was a match, which had been lit and thrown down. Now, nobody about
the house had had occasion to use a match in that room that day,
and, if they had, certainly wouldn't have thrown it on the cover of
the dressing-table. So that, presuming the thief to have used that
match, the robbery must have been committed when the room was getting
dark--- immediately before Mrs. Heath returned, in fact. The thief
had evidently struck the match, passed it hurriedly over the various
trinkets lying about, and taken the most valuable."
"Nothing else was even moved?"
"Nothing at all. Then the thief must have escaped by the window,
although it was not quite clear how. The walking party approached the
house with a full view of the window, but saw nothing, although the
robbery must have been actually taking place a moment or two before
they turned up.
"There was no water-pipe within any practicable distance of the window.
But a ladder usually kept in the stable-yard was found lying along the
edge of the lawn. The gardener explained, however, that he had put the
ladder there after using it himself early in the afternoon."
"Of course, it might easily have been used again after that and put
back."
"Just what the Scotland Yard man said. He was pretty sharp, too, on
the gardener, but very soon decided that he knew nothing of it. No
stranger had been seen in the neighbourhood, nor had passed the lodge
gates. Besides, as the detective said, it scarcely seemed the work of a
stranger. A stranger could scarcely have known enough to go straight to
the room where a lady--only arrived the day before--had left a valuable
jewel, and away again without being seen. So all the people about the
house were suspected in turn. The servants offered, in a body, to have
their boxes searched, and this was done; everything was turned over,
from the butler's to the new kitchenmaid's. I don't know that I should
have had this carried quite so far if I had been the loser myself, but
it was my guest, and I was in such a horrible position. Well, there's
little more to be said about that, unfortunately. Nothing came of it
all, and the thing's as great a mystery now as ever. I believe the
Scotland Yard man got as far as suspecting _me_ before he gave it up
altogether, but give it up he did in the end. I think that's all I know
about the first robbery. Is it clear?"
"Oh, yes; I shall probably want to ask a few questions when I have seen
the place, but they can wait. What next?"
"Well," Sir James pursued, "the next was a very trumpery affair,
that I should have forgotten all about, probably, if it hadn't been
for one circumstance. Even now I hardly think it could have been the
work of the same hand. Four months or thereabout after Mrs. Heath's
disaster--in February of this year, in fact--Mrs. Armitage, a young
widow, who had been a schoolfellow of my daughter's, stayed with us
for a week or so. The girls don't trouble about the London season, you
know, and I have no town house, so they were glad to have their old
friend here for a little in the dull time. Mrs. Armitage is a very
active young lady, and was scarcely in the house half an hour before
she arranged a drive in a pony-cart with Eva--my daughter--to look up
old people in the village that she used to know before she was married.
So they set off in the afternoon, and made such a round of it that they
were late for dinner. Mrs. Armitage had a small plain gold brooch--not
at all valuable, you know: two or three pounds, I suppose--which she
used to pin up a cloak or anything of that sort. Before she went out
she stuck this in the pincushion on her dressing-table, and left a
ring--rather a good one, I believe--lying close by."
"This," asked Hewitt, "was not in the room that Mrs. Heath had
occupied, I take it?"
"No; this was in another part of the building. Well, the brooch
went--taken, evidently, by someone in a deuce of a hurry, for when
Mrs. Armitage got back to her room, there was the pincushion with a
little tear in it, where the brooch had been simply snatched off. But
the curious thing was that the ring--worth a dozen of the brooch--was
left where it had been put. Mrs. Armitage didn't remember whether or
not she had locked the door herself, although she found it locked when
she returned; but my niece, who was indoors all the time, went and
tried it once--because she remembered that a gasfitter was at work on
the landing near by--and found it safely locked. The gasfitter, whom
we didn't know at the time, but who since seems to be quite an honest
fellow, was ready to swear that nobody but my niece had been to the
door while he was in sight of it--which was almost all the time. As
to the window, the sash-line had broken that very morning, and Mrs.
Armitage had propped open the bottom half about eight or ten inches
with a brush; and when she returned, that brush, sash and all, were
exactly as she had left them. Now, I scarcely need tell _you_ what an
awkward job it must have been for anybody to get noiselessly in at that
unsupported window; and how unlikely he would have been to replace it,
with the brush, exactly as he found it."
[Illustration: "I WAS TAKING A LITTLE PRACTICE."]
"Just so. I suppose the brooch was really gone? I mean, there was no
chance of Mrs. Armitage having mislaid it?"
"Oh, none at all. There was a most careful search."
"Then, as to getting in at the window, would it have been easy?"
"Well, yes," Sir James replied; "yes, perhaps it would. It is a
first-floor window, and it looks over the roof and skylight of the
billiard-room. I built the billiard-room myself--built it out from a
smoking-room just at this corner. It would be easy enough to get at
the window from the billiard-room roof. But, then," he added, "that
couldn't have been the way. Somebody or other was in the billiard-room
the whole time, and nobody could have got over the roof (which is
nearly all skylight) without being seen and heard. I was there myself
for an hour or two, taking a little practice."
"Well, was anything done?"
"Strict inquiry was made among the servants, of course, but nothing
came of it. It was such a small matter that Mrs. Armitage wouldn't hear
of my calling in the police or anything of that sort, although I felt
pretty certain that there must be a dishonest servant about somewhere.
A servant might take a plain brooch, you know, who would feel afraid of
a valuable ring, the loss of which would be made a greater matter of."
"Well, yes--perhaps so, in the case of an inexperienced thief, who also
would be likely to snatch up whatever she took in a hurry. But I'm
doubtful. What made you connect these two robberies together?"
"Nothing whatever--for some months. They seemed quite of a different
sort. But scarcely more than a month ago I met Mrs. Armitage at
Brighton, and we talked, among other things, of the previous
robbery--that of Mrs. Heath's bracelet. I described the circumstances
pretty minutely, and when I mentioned the match found on the table she
said, 'How strange! Why, _my_ thief left a match on the dressing-table
when he took my poor little brooch!'"