THE MAN WITH THE MOLE
When I had seen my guest off by the last train on Saturday night, I
walked homeward slowly, cogitating on the results of his visit. It
seemed to me that they were very insignificant. In the morning we had
explored the piece of shore on which the bag and the box of tablets
had been found, making our way to it by the narrow and intricate
alleys which seemed to be the only approach; and we had reached the
same conclusion. It was an impossible place.
“If we assume,” said Thorndyke, “as we must, on the apparent
probabilities, that the tragedy occurred here, we must assume that
there are some significant circumstances that are unknown to us. Mrs.
Frood could not have strayed here by chance. We can think of no
business that could have brought her here; and since she was neither a
child nor a fool, she could not have been enticed into such an
obviously sinister locality without some plausible pretext. There is
evidently something more than meets the eye.”
“Something, you mean, connected with her past life and the people she
knew?”
“Exactly. I am having careful inquiries made on the subject in likely
quarters, including the various theatrical photographers. They form
quite a promising source of information, as they are not only able to
give addresses but they can furnish us with photographs of members of
the companies who would have been colleagues, and, at least,
acquaintances.”
“If you come across any photographs of Mrs. Frood,” I said, “I should
like to see them.”
“You shall,” he replied. “I shall certainly collect all I can get, on
the chance that they may help us with the identification of the body;
which may possibly present some difficulty.”
Here I was reminded of Cobbledick’s observations, and, distasteful as
they were, I repeated them to Thorndyke.
“The sergeant is quite right,” said he. “This is apparently a criminal
case, involving a charge of wilful murder. To sustain that charge, the
prosecution will have to produce incontestable evidence as to the
identity of the deceased. Clothing alone would not be sufficient to
secure a conviction. The body would have to be identified. And the
sergeant’s anxiety is quite justified. Have you had any experiences of
bodies recovered from the water?”
“Yes,” I replied; “and I don’t like to think of them.” I shuddered as
I spoke, for his question had recalled to my memory the incidents of a
professional visit to Poplar Mortuary. There rose before my eyes the
picture of a long black box with a small glass window in the lid, and
of a thing that appeared at that window; a huge, bloated, green and
purple thing, with groups of radiating wrinkles, and in the middle a
button-like object that looked like the tip of a nose. It was a
frightful picture; and yet I knew that when the river that we stood by
should give up its dead----
I put the thought away with a shiver and asked faintly: “About the man
Frood. Don’t you think that his disappearance throws some light on the
mystery?”
“It doesn’t throw much light,” replied Thorndyke, “because nothing is
known about it. Obviously the coincidence in time of the
disappearance, added to the known character of the man and his
relations with his wife, make him an object of deep suspicion. His
whereabouts will have to be traced and his time accounted for. But I
have ascertained that the police know nothing about him, and my own
inquiries have come to nothing, so far. He seems to have disappeared
without leaving a trace. But I shall persevere. Your object--and
mine--is to clear up the mystery, and if a crime has been committed,
to bring the criminal to justice.”
So that was how the matter stood; and it did not appear to me that
much progress had been made towards the elucidation of the mystery. As
to the perpetrator of that crime, he remained a totally unknown
quantity, unless the deed could be fixed on the missing man, Frood.
And so matters remained for some days. Then an event occurred which
seemed to promise some illumination of the darkness; a promise that it
failed to fulfil.
It was about a week after Thorndyke’s visit. I had gone out after
lunch to post off to him the set of photographs which had been
delivered to me by the photographer with my own set. I went into the
post-office to register the package, and here I found Bundy in the act
of sending off a parcel. When we had transacted our business we
strolled out together, and he asked:
“What are you going to do now, Doctor?”
“I was going to walk down to Blue Boar Pier,” said I, “to see if
anything further has been discovered.”
“Should I be in the way if I walked there with you?” he asked. “I’ve
got nothing to do at the moment. But perhaps you would rather go
alone. You’ve had a good deal of my society lately.”
“Not more than I wanted, Bundy,” I answered. “You are my only chum
here, and you are not unappreciated, I can assure you.”
“It’s nice of you to say that,” he rejoined, with some emotion. “I’ve
sometimes felt that I was rather thrusting my friendship on you.”
“Then don’t ever feel it again,” said I. “It has been a bit of luck
for me to find a man here whom I could like and chum in with.”
He murmured a few words of thanks, and we walked on for a while
without speaking. Presently, as we turned into the lane by the Blue
Boar Inn, he said, a little hesitatingly:
“Don’t you think, Doc, that it is rather a mistake to let your mind
run so much on this dreadful affair? It seems to be always in your
thoughts. And it isn’t good for you to think so much about it. I’ve
noticed you quite a lot, and you haven’t been the same since--since it
happened. You have looked worried and depressed.”
“I haven’t felt the same,” said I. “It has been a great grief to me.”
“But,” he urged, “don’t you think you should try to forget it? After
all, she was little more than an acquaintance.”
“She was a great deal more than that, Bundy,” said I. “While she was
alive, I would not admit even to myself that my feeling towards her
was anything more than ordinary friendship. But it was; and now that
she is gone, there can be no harm in recognizing the fact, or even in
confessing it to you, as we are friends.”
“Do you mean, Doc,” he said in a low voice, “that you were in love
with her?”
“That is what it comes to, I suppose,” I answered. “She was the only
woman I had ever really cared for.”
“And did she know it?” he asked.
“Of course she didn’t,” I replied indignantly. “She was a lady and a
woman of honour. Of course she never dreamed that I cared for her, or
she would never have let me visit her.”
For a few moments he walked at my side in silence. Then he slipped his
arm through mine, and pressing it gently with his hand, said softly
and very earnestly: “I’m awfully sorry, Doc. It is frightfully hard
luck for you, though it couldn’t have been much better even if--but
it’s no use talking of that. I _am_ sorry, old chap. But still, you
know, you ought to try to put it away. _She_ wouldn’t have wished you
to make yourself unhappy about her.”
“I know,” said I. “But I feel that the office belongs to me, who cared
most for her, to see that the mystery of her death is cleared up and
that whoever wronged her is brought to justice.”
He made no reply to this but walked at my side with his arm linked in
mine, meditating with an air of unwonted gravity.
When we reached the head of the pier the place was deserted excepting
for one man; a sea-faring person, apparently, who was standing with
his back to us, studying intently the bills that were stuck on the
wall of the look-out. As we were passing, my eye caught the word
“Wanted” on a new bill, and pausing to read it over the man’s
shoulder, I found that it was a description of the unknown man--“with
a mole on the left side of his nose”--who had pawned the opal brooch.
Bundy read it, too, and as we walked away he remarked: “They are
rather late in putting out those bills. I should think that gentleman
will have left the locality long ago, unless he was a local person”;
an opinion with which I was disposed to agree.
After a glance round the shore and at “the Ark”--which was closed but
of which the chimney emitted a cheerful smoke suggestive of culinary
activities on the part of “Mr. Noah”--we sauntered up past the head of
the creek, along the rough path by the foundry, and out upon the upper
shore.
“Well, I’m hanged!” exclaimed Bundy, glancing back at the watch-house,
“that chap is still reading that bill. He must be a mighty slow
reader, or he must find it more thrilling than I did. Perhaps he knows
somebody with a mole on his nose.”
I looked back at the motionless figure; and at that moment another
figure appeared and advanced, as we had done, to look over the
reader’s shoulder.
“Why, that looks like old Cobbledick--come to admire his own literary
productions. There’s vanity for you. Hallo! What’s up now?”
As Bundy spoke, the reader had turned to move away and had come face
to face with the sergeant. For a moment both men had stood stock
still; then there was a sudden, confused movement on both sides, with
the final result that the sergeant fell, or was knocked, down and that
the stranger raced off, apparently in our direction. He disappeared at
once, being hidden from us by the foundry buildings, and we advanced
towards the end of the fenced lane by which we had come, to intercept
him, waiting by the edge of a trench or dry ditch.
“Here he comes,” said Bundy, a trifle nervously, as rapid footfalls
became audible in the narrow, crooked lane. Suddenly the man appeared,
running furiously, and as he caught sight of us, he whipped out a
large knife, and, flourishing it with a menacing air, charged straight
at us. I watched an opportunity to trip him up; but as he approached
Bundy pulled me back with such energy that he and I staggered on the
brink of the ditch, capsized, and rolled together to the bottom. By
the time we had managed to scramble up, the man had disappeared into
the wilderness of sheds, scrap-heaps, derelict boilers, and stray
railway-waggons that filled the area of land between the foundry and
the coal-wharves and jetties.
“Come on, Bundy,” said I, as my companion stood tenderly rubbing
various projecting portions of his person; “we mustn’t lose sight of
him.”
But Bundy showed no enthusiasm; and at this moment a rapid crescendo
of heavy foot-falls was followed by the emergence of the sergeant,
purple-faced and panting, from the end of the lane.
“Which way did he go?” gasped Cobbledick.
I indicated the wilderness, briefly explaining how the fugitive had
escaped us, whereupon the sergeant started forward at a lumbering trot
and we followed. But it was an unfavourable hunting-ground, for the
bulky litter--the heaps of coal-dust, the wagons, the cranes, the
piles of condemned machinery, mingled with clumps of bushes--gave the
fugitive every opportunity to disappear. And, in fact, he had
disappeared without leaving a trace. Presently we came out on a wharf
beside which a schooner was berthed; a trim-looking little craft with
a white under-body and black top-sides, bearing a single big yard on
her fore-mast and the name Anna on her counter. She was all ready for
sea and was apparently waiting for high water, for her deck was all
clear and a man on it was engaged in placidly coiling a rope on the
battened hatch while another watched him from the door of the
deck-house. On this peaceful scene the sergeant burst suddenly and
hailing the rope-coiler demanded:
“Have you seen a man run past here?”
The mariner dropped the rope, and looking up drowsily, repeated:
“Have I seen a mahn?”
“Yes, a sea-faring man with a mole on his nose.”
The mariner brightened up perceptibly. “Please?” said he.
“A sailor-man with a mole on his nose.”
“Ach!” exclaimed the mariner. “Vos it tied on?”
“Tied on!” the sergeant snorted impatiently. “Of course it wasn’t. It
grew there.”
Here the second mariner apparently asked some question, for our friend
turned to him and replied: “_Ja. Maulwurf_”; on which I heard Bundy
snigger softly.
“No, no,” I interposed; “not that sort of mole. A kind of wart, you
know. _Das Mal_.”
On this the second mariner fell out of the deckhouse door, and the
pair burst into yells of laughter, rolling about the deck in agonies
of mirth, wiping their eyes, muttering _Maulwurf_, _Maulwurf_, and
screeching like demented hyenas.
“Well,” Cobbledick demanded impatiently, “have you seen him?”
The mariner shook his head. “No,” he replied, shakily. “I have not any
mahn seen.”
“Well, why couldn’t you say so at first?” the sergeant growled.
“I vos zo zubbraised,” the mariner explained, glancing at his
shipmate; and the pair burst out into fresh howls of laughter.
The sergeant turned away with a sort of benevolent contempt and ran
his eye despairingly over the wilderness. “I suppose we had better
search this place,” said he, “though he is pretty certain to have got
away.”
At his suggestion we separated and examined the possible hiding-places
systematically, but, of course, with no result. Once only I had a
momentary hope that we had not lost our quarry, when the sergeant
suddenly stooped and began cautiously to stalk an abandoned boiler
surrounded by a clump of bushes; but when the grinning countenance of
Bundy appeared at the opposite end and that reprobate crept out
stealthily and proceeded to stalk the sergeant, the last hope faded.
“I certainly thought I saw someone moving in those bushes,” said
Cobbledick, with a disappointed air.
“So did Mr. Bundy,” said I. “You must have seen one another.”
The sergeant glanced suspiciously at our colleague, but made no
remark; and we continued our rather perfunctory search. At length we
gave it up and slowly returned to the neighbourhood of the pier. By
this time the tide had turned, and a few loiterers were standing about
watching the procession of barges moving downstream on the ebb. Among
them was a grave-looking, sandy-haired man who leaned against the
watch-house, smoking reflectively as he surveyed the river. To this
philosopher Cobbledick addressed himself, explaining, as he was in
plain clothes:
“Good afternoon. I am a police officer and I am looking for a man who
is described on that bill.” Here he indicated the poster.
The philosopher turned a pale grey, and somewhat suspicious eye on
him, and having removed his pipe, expectorated thoughtfully but made
no comment on the statement.
“A sea-faring man,” continued the sergeant, “with a mole on the left
side of his nose.” He looked enquiringly at the philosopher, who
replied impassively:
“Nhm--nhm.”
“Do you happen to have seen a man answering that description?”
“Nhm--nhm,” was the slightly ambiguous reply.
“You _have_ seen him?” the sergeant asked, eagerly.
“Aye.”
“Do you know if he belongs to any of the craft that trade here?”
“Nhm--nhm.”
“Do you happen to know which particular vessel he belongs to?”
“Aye,” was the answer, accompanied by a grave nod.
“Can you tell me,” the sergeant asked patiently, “which vessel that
is, and where she is at present?”
Our friend replaced his pipe and took a long draw at it, gazing
meditatively at a schooner which was moving swiftly down the river
under the power of an auxiliary motor, and setting her sails as she
went. I had noticed her already, and observed that she had a white
under-body and black top-sides, and that she carried a single long
yard on her fore-mast. At length our friend removed his pipe,
expectorated, and nodded gravely at the schooner.
“Yon,” said he, and replaced his pipe, as a precaution, I supposed,
against unnecessary loquacity.
Cobbledick gazed wistfully at the receding schooner. “Pity,” said he.
“I should have liked to have a look at that fellow.”
“You could get the schooner held up at Sheerness, couldn’t you?” I
asked.
“Yes; I could send a ’phone message to Garrison Point Fort. But, you
see, she’s a foreigner. Might make trouble. And he is probably not the
man we want. After all, it’s only a matter of a mole.”
“Maulwurf,” murmured Bundy.
“Yes,” said the sergeant, with a faint grin; “those beggars were
laughing at us. Well, it can’t be helped.”
We stood for a moment or two watching the schooner set one sail after
another. Presently Bundy observed:
“Methinks, Sergeant, that Mr. Noah is trying to attract your
attention.”
We glanced towards the Ark, the tenant of which was seated in the
stern-sheets, scrubbing a length of rusty chain. As he caught the
sergeant’s eye, he beckoned mysteriously, whereupon we descended the
bank, and, picking our way across the muddy grass by his little
causeway of stepping-stones, approached the foot of the short ladder.
“Well, Israel,” said the sergeant, resting his hands on the gunwale of
the old boat as he made a rapid survey of the interior, “giving the
family plate a bit of a polish, eh?”
“Plate!” exclaimed the old man, holding up the chain, which, as I now
saw, had a number of double hooks linked to it, “this ain’t plate.
’Tis what we calls a creeper.”
“A creeper,” repeated the sergeant, looking at it with renewed
interest. “Ha, yes, hm. A creeper, hey? Well, Israel, what’s a-doing?
Have you got something to show us?”
The old man laid down the creeper and the scrubbing-brush--which had a
strong suggestion of salvage in its appearance--and moved towards the
door of the Ark. “Come along inside,” said he.
Cobbledick mounted the ladder and motioned me to follow, which I did,
while Bundy discretely sauntered away and sat down on the bank. On
entering, I observed that the Ark followed closely the constructional
traditions. Like its classical prototype, it was “pitched with pitch,
within and without,” and was furnished with a single small window, let
into the door and hermetically sealed.
Seeing that our host looked at me with some disfavour, the tactful
sergeant hastened to make us known to one another.
“This is Dr. Strangeways, Israel. He was Mrs. Frood’s doctor, and he
knows all about this affair. This, Doctor, is Mr. Israel Bangs, the
eminent long-shoreman, a sort of hereditary Grand Duke of the
Rochester foreshore.”
I bowed ceremoniously, and the Grand Duke acknowledged the
introduction with a sour grin. Then, lifting the greasy lid of a
locker, he dived into it and came to the surface, as it were, with a
small shoe in his hand.
“What do you say to that?” he demanded, holding the shoe under the
sergeant’s nose. The sergeant said nothing, but looked at me; and I,
suddenly conscious of the familiar sickening sensation, could do no
more than nod in reply. Soiled, muddy and sodden as it was, the poor
little relic instantly and vividly recalled the occasion when I had
last seen it, then all trim and smart, peeping coyly beneath the hem
of the neat brown skirt.
“Where did you find it, Israel?” asked Cobbledick.
“Ah,” said Bangs, with a sly leer, “that’s tellin’, that is. Never you
mind where I found it. There’s the shoe.”
“Don’t be a fool, Israel,” said the sergeant. “What use do you suppose
the shoe is to me if I don’t know where you found it? I’ve got to put
it in evidence, you know.”
“You can put it where you like, so long as you pays for it,” the old
rascal replied, doggedly. “The findin’ of it’s my business.”
There ensued a lengthy wrangle, but the sergeant, though patient and
polite, was firm. Eventually Israel gave way.
“Well,” he said, “if you undertakes not to let on to Sam Hooper or any
of his lot, I’ll tell you. I found it on the mud, side of the long
crik betwixt Blue Boar Head and Gas-’us Point.”
The sergeant made a note of the locality, and, after having sworn not
to divulge the secret to Sam Hooper or any other of the shore-rat
fraternity, and having ascertained that Israel had no further
information to dispose of, rose to depart; and, I noticed that, as we
passed out towards the ladder, he seemed to bestow a glance of
friendly recognition on the creeper.
“Well,” said Bundy, when we rejoined him, “what had Mr. Noah to say? I
hope you remembered me kindly to my old friends, Shem, Ham, and
Japhet.”
“He has found one of Mrs. Frood’s shoes,” answered the sergeant,
producing it from his pocket and offering it for inspection. Bundy
glanced at it indifferently, and then remarked: “It seems to answer
the description, but, for my part, I don’t quite see the use of all
this searching and prying. It only proves what we all know. There’s no
doubt that she fell into the river. The question is, how did she get
there? It is not likely that it was an accident, and, if it wasn’t, it
must have been a crime. What we want to know is, who is the criminal?”
Cobbledick pocketed the shoe with an impatient gesture.
“That’s the way they always talk,” said he. “They will always begin at
the wrong end. The question, ‘Who is the murderer?’ does not arise
until it is certain that there has been a murder; and it can’t be
certain that there has been a murder until it is certain that the
missing person is dead. And that certainty can hardly be established
until the body is found. But, in the meantime, these articles are
evidence enough to justify us in making other inquiries, and they may
give us a hint where to look for the body. They do, in fact. They
suggest that the body is probably not very far away, and more likely
to be up-stream than down.”
“I don’t see how they do,” said Bundy.
“I do,” retorted the sergeant, “and that’s enough for me.”
Bundy, with his customary discretion, took this as closing the
discussion, and further--as I guessed--surmising that the sergeant
might wish to have a few words with me alone, took his leave of us
when we reached the vicinity of the office.
“That is not a bad idea of old Israel’s,” said Cobbledick, when Bundy
had gone. “The creeper, I mean.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“You know what a creeper is used for, I suppose,” said he. “In the old
days, the revenue boats used to trail them along over the bottom in
shallow water where they suspected that the smugglers had sunk their
tubs. You see they couldn’t always get a chance to land the stuff.
Then they used to fill the spirits into a lot of little ankers or
tubs, lash them together into a sort of raft and sink the raft close
in-shore, on a dark night, in a marked place where their pals could go
some other night and fish them up. Well the revenue cutters knew most
of those places and used to go there and drift over them trailing
creepers. Of course, if there were any tubs there, the creepers hooked
on to the lashings and up they came.”
“But what do you suppose is Israel’s idea?” I asked.
“Why, as the body ought to have come up long before this, and it
hasn’t, he thinks it has been sunk. It might have been taken up the
river in a boat, and sunk in midstream with a weight of some sort. Or
it might have got caught by a lost anchor or on some old moorings.
That would account for its not coming up and for these oddments
getting detached and drifting ashore. So old Israel is going to get to
work with a creeper. I expect he spends his nights creeping over the
likely spots, and that is what makes him so deuced secret about the
place where he found that shoe. He reckons that the body is somewhere
thereabouts.”
I made no comment on this rather horrible communication. Of course, it
was necessary that the body should be searched for, since its
discovery was the indispensable condition of the search for the
murderer. But I did not want to hear more of the dreadful details than
was absolutely unavoidable.
When we reached the Guildhall, I halted and was about to take leave of
the sergeant when he said, somewhat hesitatingly:
“Do you remember, Doctor, when you met me last Saturday, you had a
gentleman with you?”
“I remember,” said I.
“Now, I wonder if you would think I was taking a liberty if I were to
ask what that gentleman’s name was. I had an idea that I knew his
face.”
“Of course it wouldn’t be a liberty,” I replied. “His name is
Thorndyke; Dr. John Thorndyke.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Cobbledick, “I thought I couldn’t be mistaken. It
isn’t the sort of face that one would forget. I once heard him give
evidence at the Old Bailey. Wonderful evidence it was, too. Since then
I’ve read reports of his investigations from time to time. He’s a
marvellous man. The way he has of raking up evidence from nowhere is
perfectly astonishing. Did you happen to talk to him about this case
at all?”
“Well, you see, Sergeant,” I answered, rather evasively, “he had come
down here for the week-end as my guest----”
“Exactly, exactly,” Cobbledick interrupted, unconsciously helping me
to avoid answering his question, “he came down for a rest and a
change, and wouldn’t want to be bothered with professional matters.
Still, you know, I think he would be interested in this case. It is
quite in his own line. It is a queer case; a very queer case in some
respects.”
“In what respects?” I asked.
It was Cobbledick’s turn to be evasive. He had apparently said more
than he had intended, and now drew in his horns perceptibly.
“Why,” he replied, “when you come to think of--of the--er--the
character of the lady, for instance. Why should anyone want to do her
any harm? And then there is the mystery as to how it happened, and the
place, and--in fact, there are a number of things that are difficult
to understand. But I mustn’t keep you standing here. If you should
happen to see Dr. Thorndyke again, it might be as well to tell him
about the case. It would be sure to interest him; and if he should, by
any chance, want to know anything that you are not in a position to
tell him, why, you know where I am to be found. I shouldn’t want to
make any secrets with him. And he might spot something that we haven’t
noticed.”
I promised to follow the sergeant’s advice, and, having bid him adieu,
turned back, and walked slowly homeward. As I went I reflected
profoundly on my conversation with Cobbledick; from which, as it
seemed to me, two conclusions emerged. First, there were elements in
this mystery that were unknown to me. I had supposed that the essence
of the mystery was the mere absence of data. But it now appeared from
the sergeant’s utterances, and still more from his evasions, that he
saw farther into the affair than I did; either because he had more
facts, or because, by reason of his greater experience, the facts
meant more to him than they did to me. The second conclusion was that
he was in some way in difficulties; that he was conscious of an
inability to interpret satisfactorily the facts that were known to
him. His evident eagerness to get into touch with Thorndyke made this
pretty clear; and the two conclusions together suggested a further
question. How much did Thorndyke know? Did he know all that the
sergeant knew? Did he perchance know more? From the scanty data with
which I had supplied him, might he possibly have drawn some
illuminating inferences that had carried his understanding of the case
beyond either mine or Cobbledick’s? It was quite possible. Thorndyke’s
great reputation rested upon his extraordinary power of inference and
constructive reasoning from apparently unilluminating facts. The facts
in this case seemed unilluminating enough. But they might not be so to
him. And again I recalled how both he and the sergeant seemed to look
to the finding of the body as probably furnishing the solution of the
mystery.