He nodded as he saw the fresh green paint on the rails, and kept his eye fixed on them till he had passed a dozen yards by the spot where the murder had been committed. Then the two crossed to the other side of the bridge. The inspection of not more than three yards of the rail had taken place when Whipple halted and gave a satisfied chuckle. ‘We’re on it, Newton,’ he declared. ‘Look here.’
He pointed to some marks on the fresh paint-work. Across the top of the upper part of the rail, and continued downwards on the outer side, the paint had been scraped away. On the river side there were a couple of irregular bruises on the paint.
‘Kids been playing about,’ said the sergeant with decision. ‘I remember in the flat murder case we got mucked about by a lot of marks on a doorway. Some bright soul thought they were Arabic characters. It turned out they were boy scout marks.’
The detective-inspector laughed. ‘All right. Seeing’s believing with you. I’ll have a shot at this my own way, though. You might go and phone through to the river division. Ask ’em to send a couple of boats up here with drags.’
Newton spat over the rail into the tide. ‘You’ll not find anything with drags,’ he said, and with this Parthian shot, went to obey his instructions. Whipple remained in thought. Once, when there was a lull in the traffic, he paced out the distance between the marks on the rail and the place where Sweeney had been killed.
‘I’m right,’ he declared to himself; ‘I’d bet on it.’
Within twenty minutes two motor-launches were off the bridge and Newton had returned. Leaving him to mark the spot where the paint had been rubbed on the rail, Whipple went down to be picked up off a convenient wharf. A short discussion with the officer in charge as to the effect of the tide-drift, and they were in mid-stream again.
Then the drags splashed overboard and they began methodically to search the bed of the river. When half an hour had gone, Whipple was beginning to bite his lip. A drag came to the surface with whipcord about its lines. A constable began to unwind it. The detective leaned forward eagerly. ‘Steady, man, don’t let it break, whatever you do.’
They pulled the thing attached to the string on board and steered for the bank, Whipple in the glow of satisfaction that comes to every man who sees the end of his work in sight. He went straight to the police station telegraph room.
‘Whipple to Superintendent C.I.,’ he dictated. ‘Inform Detroit police Sweeney’s insurance void. Absolute proof committed suicide. Details to follow.’
Later, in his own office, his stenographer took down to be typed for record:
‘SIR,—I respectfully submit the following facts in regard to the supposed murder of the man Sweeney—
‘I first gained the impression that it was suicide from the doctor’s report that the explosion of a pistol had scorched the dead man’s face, showing that it had been held very closely to his head. This impression was strengthened by the fact that Iles, the American who was found by the body and at first suspected of the murder, could, if his motive was robbery, have attained this end more simply without violence. He is known to the New York police as an expert pickpocket. I need scarcely add that the knowledge that Sweeney was practically a bankrupt before he left the United States and had insured himself very heavily disposed me still more to the theory of suicide. If Sweeney had it in his mind to kill himself, it was indispensable to his purpose (since practically all life insurances are void in the event of suicide) to make the act appear (1) as an accident; (2) as a murder. He chose the latter.
‘Unfortunately for himself, Iles picked Sweeney’s pocket on the journey to London. Whether the latter discovered his loss before his death it is impossible to say with certainty. I believe not. Among the documents which Iles found was a letter in printed characters (which with others he burnt) demanding an appointment on the Albert Bridge, and conveying indirect threats. It is my belief that this letter was written by Sweeney himself with the idea that it would be found on his body and confirm the appearance of murder. I considered very fully the various means by which Sweeney might dispose of a pistol after he had shot himself. Only one practicable way occurred to me, and this was confirmed by an examination of the bridge rail, which had been newly painted. There were the paint stains on the dead man’s clothes, and Iles had said he noticed him looking over the rails.
‘It seemed to me that if the butt of a pistol were secured to a cord, and a heavy weight attached to the other end of the cord and dropped over the rail of the bridge before the fatal shot was fired, the grip on the pistol would relax and it would be automatically dragged into the water. The river was dragged at my request, and the discovery of an automatic pistol tied by a length of whipcord to a heavy leaden weight proved my theory right … With regard to Iles, I shall charge him with pocket-picking on his own confession, and ask that he shall be recommended for deportation as an undesirable alien … I have the honour to be your humble servant,
‘LIONEL WHIPPLE,
‘Divisional Detective-Inspector.’
‘All the same, sir,’ commented Detective-Sergeant Newton, ‘it looked like being that tough. He’s in luck that you tumbled to the gag.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Whipple smilingly. ‘It’s luck—just luck.’
THE MAN WITH THE PALE-BLUE EYES
A BLUE haze of smoke which even the electric fans could not entirely dispel overhung the smoking saloon of the S.S. Columbia. With the procrastination of confirmed poker players, they had lingered at the game till well after midnight. Silvervale cut off a remark to glance at his cards. He yawned as he flung them down.
‘She can call herself Eleanor de Reszke or anything else she likes on the passenger list,’ he declared languidly, ‘but she’s Madeline Fulford all right, all right. She’s come on a bit in the last two years, though she always was a bit of a high stepper. Wonder if de Reszke knows anything about Crake?’
Across the table a sallow-faced man, whose play had hitherto evinced no lack of nerve, threw in a full hand, aces up, on a moderate rise. No one save himself knew that he had wasted one of the best of average poker hands. His fingers, lean and tremulous, drummed mechanically on the table. For a second a pair of lustreless, frowning blue eyes rested on Silvervale’s face.
‘So that’s the woman who was in the Crake case? It was her evidence that got the poor devil seven years, wasn’t it? As I remember the newspaper reports, she was a kind of devil incarnate.’
‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ observed Silvervale dryly, ‘and I’m a newspaper man myself. I didn’t hear the trial, but I saw her afterwards. It never came out why she gave him away. There must have been some mighty strong motive, for he had spent thousands on her. I guess there was another woman at the bottom of it. Anyway, her reasons don’t matter. She cleared an unpleasant trickster out of the way and put him where he belongs. But for her he might have been carrying on that swindling bank of his now. I’ll take three cards.’
The man with the pale-blue eyes jerked his head abruptly. ‘Yes, he’s where he belongs,’ he asserted, ‘and she—why, she’s Mrs de Reszke and a deuced pretty woman … Hello!’ He broke off short, staring with fascinated eyes beyond Silvervale. The journalist swerved round in his chair, to meet a livid
