THE cab drew up at the address in Old Compton Street given by Freyberger
to the driver. It was a small shop, filled with antiques, old china,
statuettes, renovated pictures.
Here the art of Japan drew a sword or flirted a fan at you; the Middle
Ages spoke through the mouthpiece of a battle-dented morion.
Behind the counter, in the midst of his treasures, mostly spurious, sat
the owner of the shop I. Antonides, smoking a cigarette and apparently
lost in reverie.
An old man, a very old man, was Antonides. A Greek of the modern Greeks,
with the head of a prophet and the hand of a money changer.
Behind that parchment-coloured forehead lay a knowledge of ancient and
modern art—profound almost as the subject itself.
Beauty of craftsmanship appealed to Antonides. He worshipped the Venus
of Milo, not for the divine beauty of her form, but for the cunning of
the hand that wrought her. A rose had no power to move his soul, but a
goblin by Calot, were it in the best style of that master, made him cry
out with pleasure.
He worshipped art for the sake of art, and he worshipped money for the
sake of money.
His fortune was reputed to be half a million, and he lived on a pound a
week.
He was very frank, with that frankness which sometimes veils the deepest
and most profound deceit; he had no loves or hates, no heart, no wife,
no children or relations. Only his money and his profound knowledge of
men and art.
There were many curiosities for sale in the shop of Antonides, but the
most curious of them all was Antonides, also on sale—at a price.
He nodded to Freyberger.
“I want you to do a little job for me, Mr Antonides.”
“What is the little job, Mr Freyberger?”
“Oh, it’s simple enough to you, impossible to anyone else.”
“Ah!”
“I want you to restore a broken—what shall I say—well, I believe it is a
marble bust.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to do more than restore it, for I want you to do the job as
quickly as possible.”
“Possibility has its limits,” said Antonides. “Show me the article.”
Freyberger went out and took from the cab the drawer wrapped in the
sheet, brought it in and unwrapped it.
Antonides examined the fragments.
“I will restore it for you,” he said, after examining minutely several
of the pieces and gauging in his mind the total number.
“How long will it take?”
“Oh—three days.”
“That won’t do. I want it by to-morrow morning.”
Antonides raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.
“Look here,” said Freyberger. “What will you charge to do it in three
days?”
“You must understand,” replied Antonides, “that I do not restore marble.
I do not restore pictures now myself. I am getting old, Mr Freyberger.”
“We are all doing that. What will you charge—”
“Getting old,” continued Antonides, as though unconscious of the other’s
question, “costs money; one has to call in help. I have secured an
assistant, an Alsatian; his name is Lermina—”
“Yes, yes, but—”
“I taught him the art of restoration, the knowledge I have placed in
that man’s head,” said the old gentleman, suddenly pretending to turn
savage, “is worth a king’s ransom, and he has repaid me in the oldest
coinage of the world—ingratitude—”
“I know, but what will you charge—”
“One moment, I wish to explain my position. Lermina is a genius.”
“Yes, yes, I grant that—”
“You know what geniuses are, just spoiled children; well, he is also
about to get married—”
“What the devil has that to do with me—”
“One moment. A genius is bad enough to deal with, but a genius in love
is infinitely worse. I ask Lermina to restore this bust, he accepts the
commission, but he is in love and can’t be hurried. Three days, well,
with seven pounds in my hand I believe I could undertake to persuade him
to complete the thing in three days.”
“Well,” said Freyberger, who knew his man right to the place where his
heart ought to have been. “Three days won’t do for me. I must have the
thing completed by to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”
Antonides said nothing, but, reaching down, produced an enormous
snuff-box from under the counter, took a pinch, tapped the box, and put
it back.
Then he smiled and shook his head.
“Come,” said Freyberger, patiently. “By ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”
“It’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible of this sort to you, if you are paid—”
“I would have to sit up all night—”
“Why, you said you had an assistant.”
“I would have to sit up all night helping him; it would be a two mans’
job.”
Then suddenly.
“Twenty pounds?”
“I’ll give you ten.”
“I never haggle.”
“I’ll give you ten.”
“Not a penny under twenty, not a brass farthing, not a denier under
twenty—look at my rent, look at my income-taxes to be paid. Five hundred
pounds they robbed me of this year in income-taxes alone.”
“Five hundred!”
“I mean fifty. I am a very poor man, Mr Freyberger—no, no, no, not a
penny under twenty.”
“All right,” said Freyberger. “If you won’t do the job I know a man who
will.”
He took the drawer and carried it to the door.
“Eighteen,” shrieked Antonides, as the detective fumbled with the door
latch.
“I tell you what,” said Freyberger. “I’ll give you fifteen, and that’s
my ultimatum.”
“Done,” said Antonides. As a matter of fact he would have done the job
for five pounds—for nothing. He divined, from the pieces he had
examined, that the thing was superexcellent and by a master’s hand, and
he would have been satisfied to have put it together on spec if he were
given a chance of purchasing it when completed.
Freyberger left the shop, and, getting into the cab, ordered the
cab-driver to take him to the Yard.
The War Office sometimes nods, and the Admiralty has been known to
indulge in reverie, but New Scotland Yard never sleeps.
The construction of the Criminal Investigation Department resembles the
construction of some beautiful and intricate piece of mechanism.
The detection of crime is its chief function, but it has others. It
keeps the eye of a stern father upon the law-breakers. There is not a
considerable criminal walking about free in London who is not known and
docketed at the Yard.
It knows more about him than he knows about himself; it knows his
height, weight and colour of his hair; it has the prints of his fingers
and the photograph of his face, it knows where he lodges and with whom
he associates, it knows the exact extent and bent of his moral twist.
When a crime of a special nature has been committed by some unknown
person, the Yard searches amongst the criminals who make that especial
crime their speciality.
One might fancy that in the case of a crime committed by a man in the
position of Sir Anthony Gyde, that the search for him would not be any
more difficult than the search for a professional criminal. As a matter
of fact, it is much more so.
Your non-professional law-breaker has no associates to betray him, and,
what is more, being a novice, he adopts no beaten methods. He will often
escape, because of his ignorance as to how he should hide, just as a
novice in fencing will sometimes, through his own stupidity and want of
knowledge, succeed in touching a master-at-arms.
There is nothing a detective dreads more than the ingenuous.
Whilst Freyberger had been pursuing his investigations, the Yard had not
been idle.
By eleven o’clock that morning an embargo had been laid upon all the
ports of England, as close as that which Buckingham laid in the case of
Anne of Austria’s jewels.
No person in the least like Sir Anthony Gyde could possibly have left
the Kingdom, unless by flight.
Every paper appearing after twelve carried his portrait far and wide. A
hundred and fifty detectives were at work upon the case, and not a train
left London for the north, south, east or west whose passengers were not
“filtered.”
The Yard knows the importance of acting promptly and efficiently in a
case like this. The first few hours are vital; it pours out money like
water. Should the required person escape the first furious rummaging of
the detective force the pursuit slackens, or seems to do so. In reality,
the nets are still out. Months pass, the suspected one feels himself no
longer searched for. “I am forgotten,” he says. Then one day he makes a
false move and feels a hand upon his shoulder.
When Freyberger returned to the Yard, he found his chief in consultation
with his subordinates.
When a crime of great magnitude or intricacy occurs, a council of the
brightest intelligences in the detective service is called.
It is technically known as the council of seven, which does not in the
least mean that the number of consultants are always seven, for
sometimes this or that member may be absent.
On this occasion there were only four men in consultation, including the
chief, but these four men constituted a galaxy of almost infernal
talent. They were seated about the room, and at the table, pen in hand,
sat the chief. Inspector Frost, a clean-shaved, youngish-looking man,
with a dark moustache twisted up at the ends, sat nearly opposite the
chief.
Standing at the table, hat in hand and preparing to go, stood a
medium-sized middle-aged man, with black hair, small black moustache,
fresh coloured face and an extraordinarily sharp and penetrating eye.
This was Professor Salt, the Home Office expert, the surgeon called in,
in all cases of murder, when the skill of a surgeon or pathologist can
be of any avail.
He had just been detailing the result of his examination of the head
found at 110B Piccadilly.
The dentist who attended Sir Anthony was, unfortunately, away on a
holiday in Cairo, so his evidence could not be obtained as to whether
the head was truly that of Sir Anthony or not. Several men who had known
him had examined the thing, and they all differed. Some said it most
certainly was; some recognized a strong likeness, but could not be sure;
several declared that, in their opinion, it wasn’t.
These people, who had been hurriedly summoned for the purpose of
identifying the thing, were of all grades and professions.
Club waiters, a nobleman or two, the servants of the house, and others.
When Freyberger, who was not a member of the high council, but who was
admitted on account of his being an active agent in the case, had closed
the door, saluted his chief and taken a modest seat in a corner of the
room, Professor Salt was just finishing the remarks he was making.
“You see,” he said, “it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty to say
exactly how long this head has been removed from the body; it has been
dipped in some agent or passed through some process, which has
discoloured the skin and shrunk the tissues. An acid might have done
this, but, unfortunately for that theory, the skin gives a slightly
alkaline reaction when touched with moist litmus paper. It has, to me,
the appearance of a head that had been dried just as you dry a ham, by
smoking it. Yet there is no trace of carbon to be found on the skin. I
confess I am somewhat at a loss, for a case of the kind has never come
before me up to this, and I believe it is unique in forensic medicine.
That head might have been removed from the body a year ago, so
dehydrated are the tissues. I do not say, having in view some unknown
preservative agent, that it may not have been removed twelve hours ago.
But I can say this, that whoever removed it was a most skilled
anatomist. I have had many cases of dismemberment; in all of them the
head has been hacked off through the cervical vertebra. This is quite
different, the head has been removed above the atlas, the ligaments
cleanly divided; no trace of hacking is discernible at the base of the
skull. The thing was not so much dismemberment as a surgical operation,
conducted with extraordinary skill, the most extraordinary skill. I do
not think,” he finished with a grim smile, “that I could have done the
thing so completely and artistically myself.” He buttoned up his
overcoat, bowed to the chief, nodded to the detectives and departed.
“Well, Freyberger?” said the chief, “what news have you brought?”
“First, sir, may I ask two questions? Has the dentist given his
decision? and have Coutts’s examined the handwriting of Sir Anthony
Gyde?”
“The dentist is absent and can’t be called,” replied the other. “And as
for the bankers, Sir Anthony went in, signed a receipt for the delivery
of the parcel containing his wife’s jewels, which receipt was handed to
the manager who released the jewels.
“The receipt was written before and handed to a man who knew Sir Anthony
Gyde perfectly well. He asked Sir Anthony would he care to see the
manager personally. Sir Anthony replied, no; that he was in a hurry. The
man, one of the chief clerks, is prepared to swear on oath that it was
Sir Anthony Gyde who signed the receipt, and no other. The chief cashier
received the receipt from the manager’s room, glanced at it, and passed
it. Not long ago, on our applying to him to glance at it again and make
sure, he has done so. He says he is sure that it is Sir Anthony’s
handwriting, but there is something about it that he can’t make out;
that it is not a forgery he is _certain_, but all the same, there is
something about it strange to him, some fine difference to the ordinary
writing of Sir Anthony.
“He says he would cash a cheque on the signature without a moment’s
hesitation; you know, in a forgery, it is the slavish imitation and
consequent cramping that marks the thing; no man’s handwriting is
exactly alike twice. Well, this thing is no slavish imitation of Gyde’s
handwriting; it is his, flowing and easy, and written under the eye of a
clerk. All the same, there is something about it strange. Gyde, it would
appear, must have been in a totally different frame of mind to what he
has ever been before in his life when he wrote that signature. I can
understand the cashier’s meaning, I think, for these men’s eyes and
brains are so wonderfully trained that they can tell from a signature
almost the emotions of the person to whom it belongs. Gyde may have been
under the influence of some extraordinary emotion, never felt by him
before, when he signed that receipt—as undoubtedly he was.”
Freyberger listened attentively, and then proceeded to give the results
of his investigations, speaking clearly and to the point.
He told how Gyde had hired the cab and driven to Howland Street,
presented a letter from Kolbecker and occupied his room; how Kolbecker
had lived in Cumberland for the last six weeks and had been paying for
his room in London, sending several postal orders to his landlady. “I
have secured the envelope of the last of these letters,” he said, taking
the envelope from his pocket.
“Give it to me,” said the chief.
He glanced at it, and a change came over his face.
“The Chief Constable of Cumberland has sent me, with splendid
promptitude, the blackmailing letters of Klein,” he said. “They arrived
only half an hour ago by special messenger. Here they are, and the
handwriting of Kolbecker is the handwriting of Klein.”
There could be no doubt; all three documents were in the same weird,
extraordinary hand.
“Gyde,” said Inspector Frost, “before he murdered his man must have got
him to write that letter. One can understand him, having the murder in
his mind, being wishful to have some hole or corner to hide in during
the night. He could not stay the night at Piccadilly, knowing that at
any moment he might be arrested.”
“Yet,” said Freyberger, “he went next morning to his bankers—an equally
dangerous proceeding.”
“The thing that strikes me,” said Inspector Dewhurst, “is, why did he go
to the Piccadilly house at all? We know he took his jewels with him, but
the jewels came up with him from the north. He could have easily taken
possession of his jewel case, sent his man on home with the rest of the
luggage, telling him that he would not be back till the morning, and
then have disappeared.”
“If he had done that,” said Freyberger, “the valet, Leloir, would now be
alive, and not dead of terror.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Again,” said Inspector Long, a man with a black beard seated near one
of the windows, “that head found in the cupboard. It is not Klein’s, for
Klein was a clean-shaven man. We know, from the evidence of a
chambermaid, that there was nothing in the cupboard the day before. It
must have been put there during the night; therefore, it must have been
put there by either Gyde or his valet, for they alone were in the room,
therefore they must have brought it from the north. We know for certain
that a man was murdered and decapitated in the north by Sir Anthony
Gyde; there is not a hole in the evidence, the boy is perfectly
believable; he is borne out by half a dozen witnesses, who saw the
motor-car going and coming, and by the headless corpse of Klein. Well,
then, did Sir Anthony bring two heads in that bag with him, the head of
Klein and the one we found, which is so strangely like his own?”
There was another silence, and then Freyberger spoke, telling of the
pieces of marble he had found in the drawer and how he had taken them to
Antonides to be reconstructed.
“I did it on my own responsibility,” he said, “knowing the desperate
urgency of the matter; to-morrow we will see what the thing represents.”
“You did right,” said the chief. “In a case like this, seemingly most
intricate, it is often some by-bit of evidence that opens it up and
exposes everything to the light. One of the points that strike me most
is the anatomical knowledge and the dexterity shown in the removal of
the head.”
He ceased, for a knock came to the door and an officer entered with a
paper in his hand. “Report of the post-mortem examination of the body in
the Gyde case, sir, just telegraphed from Carlisle.”
“Give it me,” said the chief. He took the paper, and the officer
withdrew.
“‘Body of a fairly well-nourished man, dressed in grey tweed—clothes
slashed with a knife, but no wounds found on the body. _Head evidently
removed by a skilled anatomist_—Ha!—severed from neck where atlas meets
occipital bone, ligamentum nuchae divided at a single stroke.’ This, so
far from clearing matters, casts everything into a deeper darkness.” He
paused a moment, and then went on. “We have incontrovertible evidence
that yesterday afternoon Sir Anthony Gyde called upon the man Klein at a
cottage on Blencarn Fell, in Cumberland; that he stayed there an hour
and left with a black bag in his hand. Now, mark you, this boy,
Lewthwaite, had his eye on the cottage the whole time. A very few
minutes after Sir Anthony’s departure he peeped through the window, and
saw the murdered body of Klein lying upon the floor. The whole mass of
evidence goes to show that there were only two men concerned in this
tragedy, Gyde and Klein, for Lewthwaite saw no one in the room.”
“Might a third man have been in hiding in an upstairs room?” put in
Inspector Long.
“He might, but it is highly improbable. Besides, we have no use for a
third man, for the crux of the thing is this: Gyde murdered Klein and
decapitated him. The head found in the cupboard was the head he removed
from Klein’s body; we are almost bound to believe this, from the two
surgeons’ reports as to the manner of decapitation—well, the head
removed from the body of Klein was _not_ Klein’s head, for, leaving
small points aside, Klein was a clean-shaved man and the head was the
head of a bearded man.
“We can say now, almost for a certainty, that Klein has not been
murdered, and that the real victim is a man extraordinarily like Gyde,
the supposed murderer; more, several people have given evidence that the
head _is_ that of Gyde.”
“I for one agree with you, sir, that the head we have here in London and
the body that is lying in Cumberland are one a part of the other.”
It was Inspector Dewhurst who spoke.
“We know,” he continued, “that Sir Anthony went into the cottage and
went out, went to London, was recognized by numerous people; we know
that _he_ is alive; we know that a man very like him was murdered, a man
who, whatever he was, was not Klein. But we know that the only motive
for this deed was the blackmailing of Sir Anthony by Klein. Why, then,
did Sir Anthony murder this other man?”
“Why,” put in Freyberger, “were those blackmailing letters left behind.
We can imagine a novice capable of such a blunder, but the whole of this
affair has been conducted with such terrible precision and coolness that
we can scarcely consider its author capable of such a slip as that. May
I speak, sir?”
“It seems to me you are speaking,” said the chief, with a smile. “Go on,
Freyberger; I am always glad to hear your views.”
“Well, sir, it seems to me that there are many points in this case, each
giving the lie to the other, each extraordinary. I have never come
across such a chain of circumstances before. Accident might have cast
all these extraordinary circumstances together. Gyde may have gone to
murder his blackmailer, and found in the cottage, as well as his
intended victim, a man very like himself. Gyde may have murdered this
man for some reason or another and taken away his head; Gyde may have
left those letters behind him from some extraordinary blunder. Klein may
have given Gyde a written passport to his lodgings. Leloir, the valet,
may simply have died of heart-disease. Gyde may have been a skilled
anatomist, as well as a financier. All these are unlikely possibilities;
each, taken separately would not, in itself, cause us so very much
surprise, but taken _en masse_, the combination is almost impossible,
viewed as a combination caused by chance.
“If chance did not place these things in juxtaposition to confound our
powers of reasoning, what did?
“There is only one possible answer. The problem before us is the work of
some subtle and profound intelligence, that, for reasons of its own, has
committed a murder, and, for easily understandable reasons, has fouled
the traces, so that we are at fault and in confusion.” Freyberger paused
and then went on: “I believe, reviewing the facts, that this
intelligence, with which we are trying to grapple, is not that of Sir
Anthony Gyde.
“You see, if we admit him to be the murderer, we must admit him to have
committed so many self-condemning faults. Going openly to the cottage,
in a motor-car of all things; leaving the letters behind him to damn him
and expose his motive; removing his victim’s head yet leaving the body
behind; going to his house in Piccadilly; going to his bankers to take
away his jewels, when he could, if he chose, have removed his jewels,
collected his money, and, having made provision for his escape and his
future, then murdered Klein.”
“One moment,” said the chief. “Gyde was a passionate man; he may have
committed this murder in a fit of passion, and, in the upset of his
brain, left those letters behind.”
“Yes,” said Freyberger. “But the hand that did the decapitation did not
show any sign of brain-upset. Again, if a man murders another in hot
blood does he decapitate him? Not as a rule. Let us suppose this head
that of some unknown third party: of course, Gyde, if he were the
murderer, may have had some powerful reason for removing the head; but
why should he leave it in a cupboard in his own house in Piccadilly as
another damning piece of evidence against himself? You will excuse me,
sir, for speaking so long, but I wish to say this:
“The faults before us are the continuous chance blunders of an
unimaginable fool, if we view them as the faults committed by Sir
Anthony Gyde. Sir Anthony Gyde could not have committed them, we may say
_could not_, for they are too many to have been committed by a man with
any reason in his head, even though in criminal matters he is a fool.
“Well, then, we are driven upon the only other supposition; that Gyde
had nothing to do with the murder, and that these seeming faults are
really not faults, or in other words, they are faults committed
purposely by some keen intelligence to bring confusion into the case. I
think what I have said is almost mathematically demonstrable.
“I do not like to say any more, except this, that in my firm belief Sir
Anthony Gyde is innocent.”
There was a murmur from the other men present, a murmur of admiration
for the logical reasoning of the little German.
“Well,” said the chief, “your argument is clever. We must admit that, if
Gyde is the murderer, then Gyde has committed more faults in the
business than it is at all probable he would commit. If Gyde is not the
murderer, then, some other man is; if that is so, I am bound to admit
that this other man has not only successfully fouled his traces but has
cast, in some extraordinary manner, the onus of the affair upon Gyde.
The proof of that is,” he continued, with a short laugh, “he has made us
issue a warrant for Gyde’s arrest. Have you anything more to say,
Freyberger? What you have said already has been to the point.”
“Only this, sir. Dr Murrell is preparing the retina of the valet,
Leloir. He intends photographing it by Mendel’s process. He may, or may
not, succeed; the thing fails as a rule, or only gives the faintest blur
of a picture. But it seems that the rods and cones of the retina take a
far more powerful impression in a case like this, if the subject has
caught his last glimpse of earthly things by the electric light. It is
just possible that the retina of Leloir may give us a picture of what he
saw before he died.”
“The only two successful cases of the kind I have heard of,” said the
chief, “occurred in Germany.”
“That is true, sir,” replied Freyberger. “The case of Ludwig Baumer,
recounted by Casper; and the case of the courtesan, Gretchen Dreschfeld,
which Addeler, the professor of forensic medicine at Bonn, made such a
success of.”
“When did Dr Murrell say his results would be known?” asked the chief.
“He did not say, sir; but, with your permission, I will call upon him
now and see what hopes he can give us of a successful photograph.”
“Do so,” said the chief. And Freyberger departed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------