not,” he replied. “if the latch Won’t yield to gentle persuasion I shall give it up. But don’t let me involve you, Jervis. I admit that it is a slightly irregular proceeding.”
“Irregular!” I repeated. “It is house-breaking, pure and simple I can only hope that you won’t be able to get in.”
The hope turned out to be a vain one, as I had secretly feared. When we had reconnoitred the stairs and established the encouraging fact that the third floor was untenanted, we inspected the door above which our victim’s name was painted; and a glance at the yawning key of an old-fashioned draw-latch told me that the deed was as good as done.
“Now, Jervis,” said Thorndyke, producing from his pocket the curious instrument that he described as a “smoker’s companion”—it was an undeniable pick-lock, made by Polton under his direction—“you had better clear out and wait for me at our chambers.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind,” I replied. “I am an accessory before the fact already, so I may as well stay and see the crime committed.”
“Then in that case,” said he, “you had better keep a lookout from the landing window and call me if any one comes to the house. That will make us perfectly safe.”
I accordingly took my station at the window, and Thorndyke, having knocked several times at the “oak” without eliciting any response, set to work with the smoker’s companion. In less than a minute the latch clicked, the outer door opened, and Thorndyke, pushing the inner door open, entered, leaving both doors ajar. I was devoured by curiosity as to what his purpose was. Obviously it must be a very definite one to justify this most extraordinary proceeding. But I dared not leave my post for a moment, seeing that we were really engaged in a very serious breach of the law and it was of vital importance that we should not be surprised in the act. I was therefore unable to observe my colleague’s proceedings, and I waited impatiently to see if anything came of this unlawful entry.
I had waited thus some ten minutes, keeping a close watch on the pavement below, when I heard Thorndyke quickly cross the room and approach the door. A moment later he came out on the landing, bearing in his hand an object which, while it enlightened me as to the purpose of the raid, added to my mystification.
“That looks like the missing sword from Herrington’s room!” I exclaimed, gazing at it in amazement.
“Yes,” he replied. “I found it in a drawer in the bedroom. Only it isn’t a sword.”
“Then, what the deuce is it?” I demanded, for the thing looked like a broad-bladed sword in a soft leather scabbard of somewhat rude native workman ship.
By way of reply he slowly drew the object from its sheath, and as it came into sight, I uttered an exclamation of astonishment. To the inexpert eye it appeared an elongated body about nine inches in length covered with coarse, black leather, from either side of which sprang a multitude of what looked like thick, black wires. Above, it was furnished with a leather handle which was surmounted by a suspension loop of plaited leather.
I take it,” said I, “that this is an elephant’s tail.”
“Yes,” he replied, “and a rather remarkable specimen. The hairs are of unusual length. Some of them, you see, are nearly eighteen inches long.”
“And what are you going to do now?” I asked.
“I am going to put it back where I found it. Then I shall run down to Scotland Yard and advise Miller to get a search warrant. He is too discreet to ask inconvenient questions.”
I must admit that it was a great relief to me when, a minute later, Thorndyke came out and shut the door; but I could not deny that the raid had been justified by the results. What had, presumably, been a mere surmise had been converted into a definite fact on which action could confidently be taken.
I suppose,” said I, as we walked down towards the Embankment en route for Scotland Yard, “I ought to have spotted this case.”
“You had the means,” Thorndyke replied. “At your first visit you learned that an object of some kind had disappeared from the wall. It seemed to be a trivial object of no value, and not likely to be connected with the crime. So you disregarded it. But it had disappeared. Its disappearance was not accounted for, and that disappearance seemed to coincide in time with the death of Herrington. It undoubtedly called for investigation. Then you found on the floor an object the nature of which was unknown to you. Obviously, you ought to have ascertained what it was.”
“Yes, I ought,” I admitted, “though I am not sure that I should have been much forrader even then. In fact, I am not so very much forrader even now. I don’t see how you spotted this man Essien, and I don’t understand why he took all this trouble and risk and even committed a murder to get possession of this trumpery curio. Of course I can make a vague guess. But I should like to hear how you ran the man and the thing to earth.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “Let me retrace the train of discoveries and inferences in their order. First I learned that an object, supposed to be a barbaric sword of some kind, had disappeared about the time of the murder—if it was a murder. Then we heard from Carston that Sir Gilbert Herrington had appropriated the insignia and ceremonial objects belonging to the king of Bekwè; that some had subsequently been restored, but others had been given to friends as curios. As I listened to that story, the possibility occurred to me that this curio which had disappeared might be one of the missing ceremonial objects. It was not only possible: it was quite probable. For Giles Herrington was a very likely person to have received one of these gifts, and his morose temper made it unlikely that he would restore it. And then, since such an object would be of great value to somebody, and since it was actually stolen property, there would be good reasons why some interested person should take forcible possession of it. This, of course, was mere hypothesis of a rather shadowy kind. But when you produced an object which I at once suspected, and then proved, to be an elephant’s hair, the hypothesis became a reasonable working theory. For, among the ceremonial objects which form what we may call the regalia of a West African king is the elephant’s tail which is carried before him by a special officer as a symbol of his power and strength. An elephant’s tail had pretty certainly been stolen from the king, and Carston said nothing about its having been restored.
“Well, when we went to Herrington’s chambers just now, it was clear to me that the thing which had disappeared was certainly not a sword. The phantom shape on the wall did not show much, but it did show plainly that the object had hung from the nail by a large loop at the end of the handle. But the suspension loop of a sword or dagger is always on the scabbard, never on the hilt. But if the thing was not a sword, what was it? The elephant’s hair that you found on the floor seemed to answer the question.
“Now, as we came in, I had noticed on the doorpost the West African name, Kwaku Essien. A man whose name is Kwaku is pretty certainly a negro. But if this was an elephant’s tail, its lawful owner was a negro, and that owner wanted to recover it and was morally entitled to take possession of it. Here was another striking agreement. The chambers over Herrington’s were occupied by a negro. Finally, you found among the floor dust a negro’s hair. Then a negro had actually been in this room. But from what we know of Herrington, that negro was not there as an invited visitor. All the probabilities pointed to Mr. Essien. But the probabilities were not enough to act on. Then we had a stroke of sheer luck. We got the chance to explore Essien’s chambers and seek the crucial fact. But here we are at Scotland Yard.”
That night, at about eight o’clock, a familiar tattoo on our knocker announced the arrival of Mr. Superintendent Miller, not entirely unexpected as I guessed.
“Well,”
