The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK ®. R. Austin Freeman
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Haldean was sitting to sketch?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied; “there is the place well in view, and you can see right up the road. I had no idea this house stood so high. From the three upper windows you can see all over the country excepting through the wood.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke rejoined, “and he has probably been in the habit of keeping watch up here with a telescope or a pair of field-glasses. Well, there is not much of interest in this room. He kept his effects in a cabin trunk which stood there under the window. He shaved this morning. He has a white beard, to judge by the stubble on the shaving-paper, and that is all. Wait, though. There is a key hanging on that nail. He must have overlooked that, for it evidently does not belong to this house. It is an ordinary town latchkey.”
He took the key down, and having laid a sheet of notepaper, from his pocket, on the dressing-table, produced a pin, with which he began carefully to probe the interior of the key-barrel. Presently there came forth, with much coaxing, a large ball of grey fluff, which Thorndyke folded up in the paper with infinite care.
“I suppose we mustn’t take away the key,” he said, “but I think we will take a wax mould of it.”
He hurried downstairs, and, unstrapping the case from his bicycle, brought it in and placed it on the table. As it was now getting dark, he detached the powerful acetylene lamp from his machine, and, having lighted it, proceeded to open the mysterious case. First he took from it a small insufflator, or powder-blower, with which he blew a cloud of light yellow powder over the table around the remains of the clock. The powder settled on the table in an even coating, but when he blew at it smartly with his breath, it cleared off, leaving, however, a number of smeary impressions which stood out in strong yellow against the black oilcloth. To one of these impressions he pointed significantly. It was the print of a child’s hand.
He next produced a small, portable microscope and some glass slides and cover-slips, and having opened the paper and tipped the ball of fluff from the key-barrel on to a slide, set to work with a pair of mounted needles to tease it out into its component parts. Then he turned the light of the lamp on to the microscope mirror and proceeded to examine the specimen.
“A curious and instructive assortment this, Jervis,” he remarked, with his eye at the microscope: “woollen fibres—no cotton or linen; he is careful of his health to have woollen pockets—and two hairs; very curious ones, too. Just look at them, and observe the root bulbs.”
I applied my eye to the microscope, and saw, among other things, two hairs—originally white, but encrusted with a black, opaque, glistening stain. The root bulbs, I noticed, were shrivelled and atrophied.
“But how on earth,” I exclaimed, “did the hairs get into his pocket?”
“I think the hairs themselves answer that question,” he replied, “when considered with the other curios. The stain is obviously lead sulphide; but what else do you see?”
“I see some particles of metal—a white metal apparently—and a number of fragments of woody fibre and starch granules, but I don’t recognize the starch. It is not wheat-starch, nor rice, nor potato. Do you make out what it is?”
Thorndyke chuckled. “Experientia does it,” said he. “You will have, Jervis, to study the minute properties of dust and dirt. Their evidential value is immense. Let us have another look at that starch; it is all alike, I suppose.”
It was; and Thorndyke had just ascertained the fact when the door burst open and Mrs. Haldean entered the room, followed by Mrs. Hanshaw and the police inspector. The former lady regarded my colleague with a glance of extreme disfavour.
“We heard that you had come here, sir,” said she, “and we supposed you were engaged in searching for my poor child. But it seems we were mistaken, since we find you here amusing yourselves fiddling with these nonsensical instruments.”
“Perhaps, Mabel,” said Mrs. Hanshaw stiffly, “it would be wiser, and infinitely more polite, to ask if Dr. Thorndyke has any news for us.”
“That is undoubtedly so, madam,” agreed the inspector, who had apparently suffered also from Mrs. Haldean’s impulsiveness.
“Then perhaps,” the latter lady suggested, “you will inform us if you have discovered anything.”
“I will tell you.” replied Thorndyke, “all that we know. The child was abducted by the man who occupied this house, and who appears to have watched him from an upper window, probably through a glass. This man lured the child into the wood by blowing this bird-call; he met him in the wood, and induced him—by some promises, no doubt—to come with him. He picked the child up and carried him—on his back, I think—up to the house, and brought him in through the front door, which he locked after him. He gave the boy this clock and the bird-call to amuse him while he went upstairs and packed his trunk. He took the trunk out through the back door and down the garden to the shed there, in which he had a motor-car. He got the car out and came back for the boy, whom he carried down to the car, locking the back door after him. Then he drove away.”
“You know he has gone,” cried Mrs. Haldean, “and yet you stay here playing with these ridiculous toys. Why are you not following him?”
“We have just finished ascertaining the facts,” Thorndyke replied calmly, “and should by now be on the road if you had not come.”
Here the inspector interposed anxiously. “Of course, sir, you can’t give any description of the man. You have no clue to his identity, I suppose?”
“We have only his footprints,” Thorndyke answered, “and this fluff which I raked out of the barrel of his latchkey, and have just been examining. From these data I conclude that he is a rather short and thin man, and somewhat lame. He walks with the aid of a thick stick, which has a knob, not a crook, at the top, and which he carries in his left hand. I think that his left leg has been amputated above the knee, and that he wears an artificial limb. He is elderly, he shaves his beard, has white hair dyed a greyish black, is partly bald, and probably combs a wisp of hair over the bald place; he takes snuff, and carries a leaden comb in his pocket.”
As Thorndyke’s description proceeded, the inspector’s mouth gradually opened wider and wider, until he appeared the very type and symbol of astonishment. But its effect on Mrs. Haldean was much more remarkable. Rising from her chair, she leaned on the table and stared at Thorndyke with an expression of awe—even of terror; and as he finished she sank back into her chair, with her hands clasped, and turned to Mrs. Hanshaw.
“Jane!” she gasped, “it is Percy—my brother-in-law! He has described him exactly, even to his stick and his pocket-comb. But I thought he was in Chicago.”
“If that is so,” said Thorndyke, hastily repacking his case, “we had better start at once.”
“We have the dogcart in the road,” said Mrs. Hanshaw.
“Thank you,” replied Thorndyke. “We will ride on our bicycles, and the inspector can borrow Willett’s. We go out at the back by the cart-track, which joins the road farther on.”
“Then we will follow in the dogcart,” said Mrs. Haldean. “Come, Jane.”
The two ladies departed down the path, while we made ready our bicycles and lit our lamps.
“With your permission, inspector,” said Thorndyke, “we will take the key with us.”
“It’s hardly legal, sir,” objected the officer. “We have no authority.”
“It is quite illegal,” answered Thorndyke; “but it is necessary; and necessity—like your military J.P.—knows no law.”
The inspector grinned and went out, regarding me with a quivering eyelid as Thorndyke locked the door with his skeleton key. As we turned into the road, I saw the light of the dogcart behind us, and we pushed forward at a swift pace, picking up the trail easily on the soft, moist road.
“What beats me,” said the inspector confidentially, as we rode along,