CHAPTER XIV

FREYBERGER once told me that he often admired the fictional detective, because of the ingenuity of his maker; but that the method of Lecocq, Sherlock Holmes and Co., had a great defect if used in the pursuit of a master criminal.

“You see,” said he, “that in a case like this you are not following the traces of feet, but the working of a brain. Now the common criminal may be taken by the methods of a Sherlock Holmes. The good Sherlock sees mud of a certain character on a man’s boots, and concludes that the man has been to Dulwich—or is it Leatherhead?—because mud of that description is found there. Our Sherlock is all eyes, nothing escapes him. He is just the sort of person I would choose to follow me if I were a criminal, for I would leave traces behind me that he would be sure to follow and that would eternally confound him. His methods would capture a bricklayer who had murdered his wife, perhaps, but they would not capture me. I doubt if I could capture myself,” said Freyberger, chuckling.

“My methods? Oh, in the ordinary cases ordinary methods, and in the extraordinary cases extraordinary ones. I think there is a lot of instinct in our work. I think a man’s mind works in ways we know little of. Sub-consciously, we do a lot of real thinking.

“I have also some theories which I use; one especially.

“Every crime is a story containing a hero, often a heroine, and a large or small collection of minor characters. The story ends with the completion of the crime by the criminal hero.

“When I am called in to a really intricate case, I am like a person to whom is handed the last chapter of the romance.

“If in that chapter subordinate characters left, it is generally enough for me; one thing leads to another till the story is complete. I search for mud on boots and stains on clothes, it is true, but I plunge, if possible, into my hero’s mind and past. There lies the heart of the mystery. If there is no hero to be found, there is a heroine. I have dragged a murderer to the graveside through the mind and past of a woman.

“I did so in the Gyde case. It is true I was helped by a man called Hellier; but that has nothing to do with my theory.”

As he drove to Piccadilly he felt somewhat dissatisfied. Gyde, unable to dispose of the head of his victim, had left it behind him at the house. This showed a certain unresourcefulness in the man. Was he, after all, on the track of a common, blundering assassin?

To Freyberger the chase was everything, the feeling in the dark for another mind, and the gripping of it and the mastering of it.

A foeman worthy of his mettle, that was what he craved for and that was what he was about to find. When he arrived, the door was opened for him by a plain-clothes officer.

“Well, Jenkins,” said the detective, “what have we found?”

“The head of Sir Anthony Gyde, sir, I believe,” replied the officer. Freyberger was taking off his overcoat; he paused with it half off.

“The head of Sir Anthony Gyde?”

“The butler, Raymond, says he can identify it,” replied Jenkins. “It was found in a cupboard in the bedroom. I came directly from Vine Street when the message arrived. They had not disturbed it, nor have I; just left it exactly as we found it.”

“That’s perfectly right; come with me.”

They went upstairs.

A tall, narrow cupboard in the bedroom wall stood open; on one of the shelves reposed the head of a bearded man. The skin of the face was strangely brown and withered, the upper lip was drawn up as if in some contortion of pain, exposing the teeth; one of these teeth was gold crowned.

The thing was sufficiently frightful, but Freyberger took it down and handled it as indifferently as though it had been a cabbage.

It was in this room that Leloir, on the night before, had died of terror.

What had he seen, and how much had this head to do with the sight?

Freyberger wrapped a towel round the thing and gave it to the plain-clothes officer to make a parcel of and remove to Vine Street. Then he went down to interrogate Raymond.

He was seated in the servants’ parlour, white and shaken-looking. Was he sure that the thing was the head of his master? Yes, only it looked brown and to have been dead a long time. He was almost sure that the thing was his master’s head.

Freyberger stood, with his eyes fixed upon the pattern of the drugget carpet, lost in thought.

The case had suddenly, and at a stroke, become complex enough to satisfy the most exigeant solver of riddles. If this was the head of Sir Anthony Gyde, then the murderer of Klein had been in his turn murdered.

But Sir Anthony Gyde had been to his bankers that morning, and had signed a receipt for his wife’s jewels and obtained them.

This being so, he must have been murdered in the interval.

It was now after one o’clock. He must, if this was indeed his head, have been murdered and dismembered in the course of three hours, the head conveyed to 110B Piccadilly, and placed where it was found.

Of course, this was absurd. Of one thing alone Freyberger felt sure.

If this were indeed the head of Sir Anthony, then the thing bore some relation to the death of the valet Leloir. Whatever unthinkable tragedy, whatever inconceivable transformation, had caused the valet to die of terror, had some strong relationship to the presence of this head in the place where it had been found.

The thing must be verified. He obtained the address of Sir Anthony’s dentist from the butler, and having ordered a telegram to be sent to him to call at Vine Street at his earliest convenience, he left the house.