mighty sure that it is the right one, because an arrest and a prosecution hangs on it. You don’t want to arrest a man and then, when you come to take his fingerprints properly, find that they are the wrong ones. So, in the case of an imperfect print, you have got to do some careful ridge-tracing and counting and systematic checking of individual ridge-characters, such as bifurcations and islands. But, even so, they don’t take so very long over it. The practised eye picks out at a glance details that an unpractised eye can hardly recognize even when they are pointed out.”
The Superintendent was proceeding to dilate, with professional enthusiasm, on the wonders of fingerprint technique and the efficiency of the Department when his eulogies were confirmed by the entrance of an officer carrying a sheaf of papers and Thorndyke’s photographs, which he delivered into Miller’s hands.
“Well, doctor,” said the Superintendent, after a brief glance at the documents, “here is your information. Jeffrey Brandon is the name of the late lamented. Will that do for you?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke, “that is the name I expected to hear.”
“Good,” said Miller. “I see they have kept the whole of his papers for some reason. I will just glance through them while you are doing Thomas Didymus with the fingerprints. But it is quite obvious, if you compare your photographs with the rolled impressions, that the ridge-patterns are identical.”
He handed Thorndyke the fingerprint sheet, to which were attached the photograph and personal description, and sat down at the table to look over the other documents, while Thorndyke walked over to the window to get a better light. But he did not concern himself with the fingerprints beyond a very brief inspection. It was the photograph that interested him. It showed, on the same print, a right profile and a full face; of which he concentrated his attention on the former. A rather remarkable profile it was, strikingly handsome and curiously classical in outline, rather recalling the head of Antinous in the British Museum. Thorndyke examined it minutely, and then—his back being turned to Miller—he drew from his waistcoat pocket the right profile of Mr. Pottermack and placed it beside the prison photograph.
A single glance made it clear that the two photographs represented the same face. Though one showed a clean-shaven young man with the full lips and strong, rounded chin completely revealed, while the other was a portrait of a bearded, spectacled, middle-aged man, yet they were unmistakably the same. The remarkable nose and brow and the shapely ear were identical in the two photographs; and in both, the lobe of the ear was marked at its tip by a dark spot.
From the photograph he turned to the description. Not that it was necessary to seek further proof; and he did, in fact, merely glance through the particulars. But that rapid glance gathered fresh confirmation. “Height 5 feet 6 inches, hair chestnut, eyes darkish grey, small port-wine mark on lobe of right ear,” etc. All the details of Jeffrey Brandon’s personal characteristics applied perfectly to Mr. Marcus Pottermack.
“I don’t quite see,” said Miller, as he took the papers from Thorndyke and laid them on the others, “why they kept all these documents. The conviction doesn’t look to me very satisfactory—I don’t like these cases where the prosecution has all its eggs in one basket, with the possible chance that they may be bad eggs; and it was a devil of a sentence for a first offence. But as the poor beggar is dead, and no reconsideration of either the conviction or the sentence is possible, there doesn’t seem much object in preserving the records. Still, there may have been some reason at the time.”
In his own mind, Thorndyke was of opinion that there might have been a very good reason. But he did not communicate this opinion. He had obtained the information that he had sought and was not at all desirous of troubling still waters; and his experience having taught him that Mr. Superintendent Miller was an exceedingly “noticing” gentleman, he thought it best to avoid further discussion and take his departure, after having expressed his appreciation of the assistance that he had received.
Nevertheless, for some time after he had gone, the Superintendent remained wrapped in profound thought; and that his cogitations were in some way concerned with the departed visitor would have been suggested by the circumstance that he sauntered to the window and looked down with a speculative eye on that visitor as he strode across the courtyard towards the Whitehall gate.
Meanwhile Thorndyke’s mind was no less busy. As he wended his way Templewards he reviewed the situation in all its bearings. The wildly improbable had turned out to be true. He had made a prodigiously long shot and he had hit the mark: which was gratifying inasmuch as it justified a previous rather hypothetical train of reasoning. Marcus Pottermack, Esq., was undoubtedly the late Jeffrey Brandon. There was now no question about that. The only question that remained was what was to be done in the matter; and that question would have been easier to decide if he had been in possession of more facts. He had heard Mr. Stalker’s opinion of the conviction, based on intimate knowledge of the circumstances, and he had heard that of the Superintendent, based on an immense experience of prosecutions. He was inclined to agree with them both; and the more so inasmuch as he had certain knowledge which they had not.
In the end, he decided to take no action at present, but to keep a watchful eye for further developments.
CHAPTER VIII
MR. POTTERMACK SEEKS ADVENTURE
In the last chapter it was stated that one of the effects of Thorndyke’s appearance at the side gate of “The Chestnuts,” Borley, was to revive in the mind of its tenant certain projects which had been considered and rejected. But perhaps the word “rejected” overstates the case. For the continued existence in a locked drawer in Mr. Pottermack’s workshop of a coat which had once been James Lewson’s and a bundle of twenty five-pound notes implied a purpose which had been abandoned only conditionally and subject to possible reconsideration.
Again and again, as the destructor which stood in the corner beyond the tool-shed smoked and flared as he fed it with combustible rubbish, had he been on the point of flinging into it the coat and the banknotes and thereby reducing to unrecognizable ash the last visible traces of the tragedy. And every time his hand had been stayed by the thought that possibly, in some circumstances as yet unforeseen, these mementoes of that night of horror might yet be made to play a useful part. So, not without many a twinge of uneasiness, he had let these incriminating objects lie hidden in the locked drawer. And now, as it seemed to him, the circumstances had arisen in which some of them, at least, might be turned to account.
What were those circumstances? Simply the state of mind of the strange lawyer. To the people of Borley, including the police, Lewson was a man who had absconded and vanished. His tracks had shown him striking out across country towards the London road. Those tracks, it is true, broke off short on the heath and had not reappeared elsewhere, but no one doubted that he had gone clear away from the vicinity of Borley and was now in hiding at a safe distance from his old haunts. The natives of the district had never given Mr. Pottermack a moment’s anxiety. But with this lawyer the case was different. The disturbing thing about him was that his curiosity, tepid as it was, concerned itself, not with the man who had vanished but with the locality from which he disappeared. But curiosity of that kind, Mr. Pottermack felt, was a thing that was not to be encouraged. On the contrary, it had better be diverted into a more wholesome channel. In short, the time had come when it would be desirable that James Lewson should make his appearance, if only by proxy, in some district as far removed as possible from the neighbourhood of “The Chestnuts,” Borley.
So it came about that Mr. Pottermack prepared to set forth along that perilous track beaten smooth by the feet of those who do not know when to let well alone.
For some days after having come to his decision in general terms he was at a loss for a detailed plan. Somehow, the stolen notes had got to be put into circulation. But not by him. The numbers of those notes were known,
