The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK ®. R. Austin Freeman
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immediately crossed the pavement, and addressed her, apparently with some question, for I heard her answer presently: “A quarter-past six is his time, sir, and he is generally punctual to the minute.”
“Thank you,” said Thorndyke; “I’ll bear that in mind;” and, lifting his hat, he walked on briskly, turning presently up a side-street which brought us out into Aldgate. It was now but five minutes to four, so we strode off quickly to keep our tryst at the mortuary; but although we arrived at the gate as the hour was striking, when we entered the building we found Dr. Davidson hanging up his apron and preparing to depart.
“Sorry I couldn’t wait for you,” he said, with no great show of sincerity, “but a post-mortem is a mere farce in a case like this; you have seen all that there was to see. However, there is the body; Hart hasn’t closed it up yet.”
With this and a curt “good-afternoon” he departed.
“I must apologize for Dr. Davidson, sir,” said Hart, looking up with a vexed face from the desk at which he was writing out his notes.
“You needn’t,” said Thorndyke; “you didn’t supply him with manners; and don’t let me disturb you. I only want to verify one or two points.”
Accepting the hint, Hart and I remained at the desk, while Thorndyke, removing his hat, advanced to the long slate table, and bent over its burden of pitiful tragedy. For some time he remained motionless, running his eye gravely over the corpse, in search, no doubt, of bruises and indications of a struggle. Then he stooped and narrowly examined the wound, especially at its commencement and end. Suddenly he drew nearer, peering intently as if something had attracted his attention, and having taken out his lens, fetched a small sponge, with which he dried an exposed process of the spine. Holding his lens before the dried spot, he again scrutinized it closely, and then, with a scalpel and forceps, detached some object, which he carefully washed, and then once more examined through his lens as it lay in the palm of his hand. Finally, as I expected, he brought forth his “collecting-box,” took from it a seed-envelope, into which he dropped the object—evidently something quite small—closed up the envelope, wrote on the outside of it, and replaced it in the box.
“I think I have seen all that I wanted to see,” he said, as he pocketed the box and took up his hat. “We shall meet tomorrow morning at the inquest.” He shook hands with Hart, and we went out into the relatively pure air.
On one pretext or another, Thorndyke lingered about the neighbourhood of Aldgate until a church bell struck six, when he bent his steps towards Harrow Alley. Through the narrow, winding passage he walked, slowly and with a thoughtful mien, along Little Somerset Street and out into Mansell Street, until just on the stroke of a quarter-past we found ourselves opposite the little tobacconist’s shop.
Thorndyke glanced at his watch and halted, looking keenly up the street. A moment later he hastily took from his pocket the cardboard box, from which he extracted the two mounted photographs which had puzzled me so much. They now seemed to puzzle Thorndyke equally, to judge by his expression, for he held them close to his eyes, scrutinizing them with an anxious frown, and backing by degrees into the doorway at the side of the tobacconist’s. At this moment I became aware of a man who, as he approached, seemed to eye my friend with some curiosity and more disfavour; a very short, burly young man, apparently a foreign Jew, whose face, naturally sinister and unprepossessing, was further disfigured by the marks of smallpox.
“Excuse me,” he said brusquely, pushing past Thorndyke; “I live here.”
“I am sorry,” responded Thorndyke. He moved aside, and then suddenly asked: “By the way, I suppose you do not by any chance understand Yiddish?”
“Why do you ask?” the newcomer demanded gruffly.
“Because I have just had these two photographs of lettering given to me. One is in Greek, I think, and one in Yiddish, but I have forgotten which is which.” He held out the two cards to the stranger, who took them from him, and looked at them with scowling curiosity.
“This one is Yiddish,” said he, raising his right hand, “and this other is Russian, not Greek.” He held out the two cards to Thorndyke, who took them from him, holding them carefully by the edges as before.
“I am greatly obliged to you for your kind assistance,” said Thorndyke; but before he had time to finish his thanks, the man had entered, by means of his latchkey, and slammed the door.
Thorndyke carefully slid the photographs back into their grooves, replaced the box in his pocket, and made an entry in his notebook.
“That,” said he, “finishes my labours, with the exception of a small experiment which I can perform at home. By the way, I picked up a morsel of evidence that Davidson had overlooked. He will be annoyed, and I am not very fond of scoring off a colleague; but he is too uncivil for me to communicate with.”
* * * *
The coroner’s subpoena had named ten o’clock as the hour at which Thorndyke was to attend to give evidence, but a consultation with a well-known solicitor so far interfered with his plans that we were a quarter of an hour late in starting from the Temple. My friend was evidently in excellent spirits, though silent and preoccupied, from which I inferred that he was satisfied with the results of his labours; but, as I sat by his side in the hansom, I forbore to question him, not from mere unselfishness, but rather from the desire to hear his evidence for the first time in conjunction with that of the other witnesses.
The room in which the inquest was held formed part of a school adjoining the mortuary. Its vacant bareness was on this occasion enlivened by a long, baize-covered table, at the head of which sat the coroner, while one side was occupied by the jury; and I was glad to observe that the latter consisted, for the most part, of genuine working men, instead of the stolid-faced, truculent “professional jurymen” who so often grace these tribunals.
A row of chairs accommodated the witnesses, a corner of the table was allotted to the accused woman’s solicitor, a smart dapper gentleman in gold pince-nez, a portion of one side to the reporters, and several ranks of benches were occupied by a miscellaneous assembly representing the public.
There were one or two persons present whom I was somewhat surprised to see. There was, for instance, our pock-marked acquaintance of Mansell Street, who greeted us with a stare of hostile surprise; and there was Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard, in whose manner I seemed to detect some kind of private understanding with Thorndyke. But I had little time to look about me, for when we arrived, the proceedings had already commenced. Mrs. Goldstein, the first witness, was finishing her recital of the circumstances under which the crime was discovered, and, as she retired, weeping hysterically, she was followed by looks of commiseration from the sympathetic jurymen.
The next witness was a young woman named Kate Silver. As she stepped forward to be sworn she flung a glance of hatred and defiance at Miriam Goldstein, who, white-faced and wild of aspect, with her red hair streaming in dishevelled masses on to her shoulders, stood apart in custody of two policemen, staring about her as if in a dream.
“You were intimately acquainted with the deceased, I believe?” said the coroner.
“I was. We worked at the same place for a long time—the Empire Restaurant in Fenchurch Street—and we lived in the same house. She was my most intimate friend.”
“Had she, as far as you know, any friends or relations in England?”
“No. She came to England from Bremen about three years ago. It was then that I made her acquaintance. All her relations were in Germany, but she had many friends here, because she was a very lively, amiable girl.”
“Had she, as far as you know, any enemies—any persons, I mean, who bore any grudge against her and were likely to do her an injury?”
“Yes. Miriam Goldstein was her enemy. She hated her.”
“You say Miriam Goldstein hated the deceased. How do you know that?”
“She made no secret of it. They had had a violent quarrel about a young man named Moses