CHAPTER XVI

THE cab drew up at the address in Old Compton Street given by Freyberger to the driver. It was a small shop, filled with antiques, old china, statuettes, renovated pictures.

Here the art of Japan drew a sword or flirted a fan at you; the Middle Ages spoke through the mouthpiece of a battle-dented morion.

Behind the counter, in the midst of his treasures, mostly spurious, sat the owner of the shop I. Antonides, smoking a cigarette and apparently lost in reverie.

An old man, a very old man, was Antonides. A Greek of the modern Greeks, with the head of a prophet and the hand of a money changer.

Behind that parchment-coloured forehead lay a knowledge of ancient and modern art—profound almost as the subject itself.

Beauty of craftsmanship appealed to Antonides. He worshipped the Venus of Milo, not for the divine beauty of her form, but for the cunning of the hand that wrought her. A rose had no power to move his soul, but a goblin by Calot, were it in the best style of that master, made him cry out with pleasure.

He worshipped art for the sake of art, and he worshipped money for the sake of money.

His fortune was reputed to be half a million, and he lived on a pound a week.

He was very frank, with that frankness which sometimes veils the deepest and most profound deceit; he had no loves or hates, no heart, no wife, no children or relations. Only his money and his profound knowledge of men and art.

There were many curiosities for sale in the shop of Antonides, but the most curious of them all was Antonides, also on sale—at a price.

He nodded to Freyberger.

“I want you to do a little job for me, Mr Antonides.”

“What is the little job, Mr Freyberger?”

“Oh, it’s simple enough to you, impossible to anyone else.”

“Ah!”

“I want you to restore a broken—what shall I say—well, I believe it is a marble bust.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to do more than restore it, for I want you to do the job as quickly as possible.”

“Possibility has its limits,” said Antonides. “Show me the article.”

Freyberger went out and took from the cab the drawer wrapped in the sheet, brought it in and unwrapped it.

Antonides examined the fragments.

“I will restore it for you,” he said, after examining minutely several of the pieces and gauging in his mind the total number.

“How long will it take?”

“Oh—three days.”

“That won’t do. I want it by to-morrow morning.”

Antonides raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders.

“Look here,” said Freyberger. “What will you charge to do it in three days?”

“You must understand,” replied Antonides, “that I do not restore marble. I do not restore pictures now myself. I am getting old, Mr Freyberger.”

“We are all doing that. What will you charge—”

“Getting old,” continued Antonides, as though unconscious of the other’s question, “costs money; one has to call in help. I have secured an assistant, an Alsatian; his name is Lermina—”

“Yes, yes, but—”

“I taught him the art of restoration, the knowledge I have placed in that man’s head,” said the old gentleman, suddenly pretending to turn savage, “is worth a king’s ransom, and he has repaid me in the oldest coinage of the world—ingratitude—”

“I know, but what will you charge—”

“One moment, I wish to explain my position. Lermina is a genius.”

“Yes, yes, I grant that—”

“You know what geniuses are, just spoiled children; well, he is also about to get married—”

“What the devil has that to do with me—”

“One moment. A genius is bad enough to deal with, but a genius in love is infinitely worse. I ask Lermina to restore this bust, he accepts the commission, but he is in love and can’t be hurried. Three days, well, with seven pounds in my hand I believe I could undertake to persuade him to complete the thing in three days.”

“Well,” said Freyberger, who knew his man right to the place where his heart ought to have been. “Three days won’t do for me. I must have the thing completed by to-morrow morning at ten o’clock.”

Antonides said nothing, but, reaching down, produced an enormous snuff-box from under the counter, took a pinch, tapped the box, and put it back.

Then he smiled and shook his head.

“Come,” said Freyberger, patiently. “By ten o’clock to-morrow morning.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible of this sort to you, if you are paid—”

“I would have to sit up all night—”

“Why, you said you had an assistant.”

“I would have to sit up all night helping him; it would be a two mans’ job.”

Then suddenly.

“Twenty pounds?”

“I’ll give you ten.”

“I never haggle.”

“I’ll give you ten.”

“Not a penny under twenty, not a brass farthing, not a denier under twenty—look at my rent, look at my income-taxes to be paid. Five hundred pounds they robbed me of this year in income-taxes alone.”

“Five hundred!”

“I mean fifty. I am a very poor man, Mr Freyberger—no, no, no, not a penny under twenty.”

“All right,” said Freyberger. “If you won’t do the job I know a man who will.”

He took the drawer and carried it to the door.

“Eighteen,” shrieked Antonides, as the detective fumbled with the door latch.

“I tell you what,” said Freyberger. “I’ll give you fifteen, and that’s my ultimatum.”

“Done,” said Antonides. As a matter of fact he would have done the job for five pounds—for nothing. He divined, from the pieces he had examined, that the thing was superexcellent and by a master’s hand, and he would have been satisfied to have put it together on spec if he were given a chance of purchasing it when completed.

Freyberger left the shop, and, getting into the cab, ordered the cab-driver to take him to the Yard.

The War Office sometimes nods, and the Admiralty has been known to indulge in reverie, but New Scotland Yard never sleeps.

The construction of the Criminal Investigation Department resembles the construction of some beautiful and intricate piece of mechanism.

The detection of crime is its chief function, but it has others. It keeps the eye of a stern father upon the law-breakers. There is not a considerable criminal walking about free in London who is not known and docketed at the Yard.

It knows more about him than he knows about himself; it knows his height, weight and colour of his hair; it has the prints of his fingers and the photograph of his face, it knows where he lodges and with whom he associates, it knows the exact extent and bent of his moral twist.

When a crime of a special nature has been committed by some unknown person, the Yard searches amongst the criminals who make that especial crime their speciality.

One might fancy that in the case of a crime committed by a man in the position of Sir Anthony Gyde, that the search for him would not be any more difficult than the search for a professional criminal. As a matter of fact, it is much more so.

Your non-professional law-breaker has no associates to betray him, and, what is more, being a novice, he adopts no beaten methods. He will often escape, because of his ignorance as to how he should hide, just as a novice in fencing will sometimes, through his own stupidity and want of knowledge, succeed in touching a master-at-arms.

There is nothing a detective dreads more than the ingenuous.

Whilst Freyberger had been pursuing his investigations, the Yard had not been idle.

By eleven o’clock that morning an embargo had been laid upon all the ports of England, as close as that which Buckingham laid in the case of Anne of Austria’s jewels.

No person in the least like Sir Anthony Gyde could possibly have left the Kingdom, unless by flight.

Every paper appearing after twelve carried his portrait far and wide. A hundred and fifty detectives were at work upon the case, and not a train left London for the north, south, east or west whose passengers were not “filtered.”

The Yard knows the importance of acting promptly and efficiently in a case like this. The first few hours are vital; it pours out money like water. Should the required person escape the first furious rummaging of the detective force the pursuit slackens, or seems to do so. In reality, the nets are still out. Months pass, the suspected one feels himself no longer searched for. “I am forgotten,” he says. Then one day he makes a false move and feels a hand upon his shoulder.

When Freyberger returned to the Yard, he found his chief in consultation with his subordinates.

When a crime of great magnitude or intricacy occurs, a council of the brightest intelligences in the detective service is called.

It is technically known as the council of seven, which does not in the least mean that the number of consultants are always seven, for sometimes this or that member may be absent.

On this occasion there were only four men in consultation, including the chief, but these four men constituted a galaxy of almost infernal talent. They were seated about the room, and at the table, pen in hand, sat the chief. Inspector Frost, a clean-shaved, youngish-looking man, with a dark moustache twisted up at the ends, sat nearly opposite the chief.

Standing at the table, hat in hand and preparing to go, stood a medium-sized middle-aged man, with black hair, small black moustache, fresh coloured face and an extraordinarily sharp and penetrating eye.

This was Professor Salt, the Home Office expert, the surgeon called in, in all cases of murder, when the skill of a surgeon or pathologist can be of any avail.

He had just been detailing the result of his examination of the head found at 110B Piccadilly.

The dentist who attended Sir Anthony was, unfortunately, away on a holiday in Cairo, so his evidence could not be obtained as to whether the head was truly that of Sir Anthony or not. Several men who had known him had examined the thing, and they all differed. Some said it most certainly was; some recognized a strong likeness, but could not be sure; several declared that, in their opinion, it wasn’t.

These people, who had been hurriedly summoned for the purpose of identifying the thing, were of all grades and professions.

Club waiters, a nobleman or two, the servants of the house, and others. When Freyberger, who was not a member of the high council, but who was admitted on account of his being an active agent in the case, had closed the door, saluted his chief and taken a modest seat in a corner of the room, Professor Salt was just finishing the remarks he was making.

“You see,” he said, “it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty to say exactly how long this head has been removed from the body; it has been dipped in some agent or passed through some process, which has discoloured the skin and shrunk the tissues. An acid might have done this, but, unfortunately for that theory, the skin gives a slightly alkaline reaction when touched with moist litmus paper. It has, to me, the appearance of a head that had been dried just as you dry a ham, by smoking it. Yet there is no trace of carbon to be found on the skin. I confess I am somewhat at a loss, for a case of the kind has never come before me up to this, and I believe it is unique in forensic medicine. That head might have been removed from the body a year ago, so dehydrated are the tissues. I do not say, having in view some unknown preservative agent, that it may not have been removed twelve hours ago. But I can say this, that whoever removed it was a most skilled anatomist. I have had many cases of dismemberment; in all of them the head has been hacked off through the cervical vertebra. This is quite different, the head has been removed above the atlas, the ligaments cleanly divided; no trace of hacking is discernible at the base of the skull. The thing was not so much dismemberment as a surgical operation, conducted with extraordinary skill, the most extraordinary skill. I do not think,” he finished with a grim smile, “that I could have done the thing so completely and artistically myself.” He buttoned up his overcoat, bowed to the chief, nodded to the detectives and departed.

“Well, Freyberger?” said the chief, “what news have you brought?”

“First, sir, may I ask two questions? Has the dentist given his decision? and have Coutts’s examined the handwriting of Sir Anthony Gyde?”

“The dentist is absent and can’t be called,” replied the other. “And as for the bankers, Sir Anthony went in, signed a receipt for the delivery of the parcel containing his wife’s jewels, which receipt was handed to the manager who released the jewels.

“The receipt was written before and handed to a man who knew Sir Anthony Gyde perfectly well. He asked Sir Anthony would he care to see the manager personally. Sir Anthony replied, no; that he was in a hurry. The man, one of the chief clerks, is prepared to swear on oath that it was Sir Anthony Gyde who signed the receipt, and no other. The chief cashier received the receipt from the manager’s room, glanced at it, and passed it. Not long ago, on our applying to him to glance at it again and make sure, he has done so. He says he is sure that it is Sir Anthony’s handwriting, but there is something about it that he can’t make out; that it is not a forgery he is certain, but all the same, there is something about it strange to him, some fine difference to the ordinary writing of Sir Anthony.

“He says he would cash a cheque on the signature without a moment’s hesitation; you know, in a forgery, it is the slavish imitation and consequent cramping that marks the thing; no man’s handwriting is exactly alike twice. Well, this thing is no slavish imitation of Gyde’s handwriting; it is his, flowing and easy, and written under the eye of a clerk. All the same, there is something about it strange. Gyde, it would appear, must have been in a totally different frame of mind to what he has ever been before in his life when he wrote that signature. I can understand the cashier’s meaning, I think, for these men’s eyes and brains are so wonderfully trained that they can tell from a signature almost the emotions of the person to whom it belongs. Gyde may have been under the influence of some extraordinary emotion, never felt by him before, when he signed that receipt—as undoubtedly he was.”

Freyberger listened attentively, and then proceeded to give the results of his investigations, speaking clearly and to the point.

He told how Gyde had hired the cab and driven to Howland Street, presented a letter from Kolbecker and occupied his room; how Kolbecker had lived in Cumberland for the last six weeks and had been paying for his room in London, sending several postal orders to his landlady. “I have secured the envelope of the last of these letters,” he said, taking the envelope from his pocket.

“Give it to me,” said the chief.

He glanced at it, and a change came over his face.

“The Chief Constable of Cumberland has sent me, with splendid promptitude, the blackmailing letters of Klein,” he said. “They arrived only half an hour ago by special messenger. Here they are, and the handwriting of Kolbecker is the handwriting of Klein.”

There could be no doubt; all three documents were in the same weird, extraordinary hand.

“Gyde,” said Inspector Frost, “before he murdered his man must have got him to write that letter. One can understand him, having the murder in his mind, being wishful to have some hole or corner to hide in during the night. He could not stay the night at Piccadilly, knowing that at any moment he might be arrested.”

“Yet,” said Freyberger, “he went next morning to his bankers—an equally dangerous proceeding.”

“The thing that strikes me,” said Inspector Dewhurst, “is, why did he go to the Piccadilly house at all? We know he took his jewels with him, but the jewels came up with him from the north. He could have easily taken possession of his jewel case, sent his man on home with the rest of the luggage, telling him that he would not be back till the morning, and then have disappeared.”

“If he had done that,” said Freyberger, “the valet, Leloir, would now be alive, and not dead of terror.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Again,” said Inspector Long, a man with a black beard seated near one of the windows, “that head found in the cupboard. It is not Klein’s, for Klein was a clean-shaven man. We know, from the evidence of a chambermaid, that there was nothing in the cupboard the day before. It must have been put there during the night; therefore, it must have been put there by either Gyde or his valet, for they alone were in the room, therefore they must have brought it from the north. We know for certain that a man was murdered and decapitated in the north by Sir Anthony Gyde; there is not a hole in the evidence, the boy is perfectly believable; he is borne out by half a dozen witnesses, who saw the motor-car going and coming, and by the headless corpse of Klein. Well, then, did Sir Anthony bring two heads in that bag with him, the head of Klein and the one we found, which is so strangely like his own?”

There was another silence, and then Freyberger spoke, telling of the pieces of marble he had found in the drawer and how he had taken them to Antonides to be reconstructed.

“I did it on my own responsibility,” he said, “knowing the desperate urgency of the matter; to-morrow we will see what the thing represents.”

“You did right,” said the chief. “In a case like this, seemingly most intricate, it is often some by-bit of evidence that opens it up and exposes everything to the light. One of the points that strike me most is the anatomical knowledge and the dexterity shown in the removal of the head.”

He ceased, for a knock came to the door and an officer entered with a paper in his hand. “Report of the post-mortem examination of the body in the Gyde case, sir, just telegraphed from Carlisle.”

“Give it me,” said the chief. He took the paper, and the officer withdrew.

“‘Body of a fairly well-nourished man, dressed in grey tweed—clothes slashed with a knife, but no wounds found on the body. Head evidently removed by a skilled anatomist—Ha!—severed from neck where atlas meets occipital bone, ligamentum nuchae divided at a single stroke.’ This, so far from clearing matters, casts everything into a deeper darkness.” He paused a moment, and then went on. “We have incontrovertible evidence that yesterday afternoon Sir Anthony Gyde called upon the man Klein at a cottage on Blencarn Fell, in Cumberland; that he stayed there an hour and left with a black bag in his hand. Now, mark you, this boy, Lewthwaite, had his eye on the cottage the whole time. A very few minutes after Sir Anthony’s departure he peeped through the window, and saw the murdered body of Klein lying upon the floor. The whole mass of evidence goes to show that there were only two men concerned in this tragedy, Gyde and Klein, for Lewthwaite saw no one in the room.”

“Might a third man have been in hiding in an upstairs room?” put in Inspector Long.

“He might, but it is highly improbable. Besides, we have no use for a third man, for the crux of the thing is this: Gyde murdered Klein and decapitated him. The head found in the cupboard was the head he removed from Klein’s body; we are almost bound to believe this, from the two surgeons’ reports as to the manner of decapitation—well, the head removed from the body of Klein was not Klein’s head, for, leaving small points aside, Klein was a clean-shaved man and the head was the head of a bearded man.

“We can say now, almost for a certainty, that Klein has not been murdered, and that the real victim is a man extraordinarily like Gyde, the supposed murderer; more, several people have given evidence that the head is that of Gyde.”

“I for one agree with you, sir, that the head we have here in London and the body that is lying in Cumberland are one a part of the other.”

It was Inspector Dewhurst who spoke.

“We know,” he continued, “that Sir Anthony went into the cottage and went out, went to London, was recognized by numerous people; we know that he is alive; we know that a man very like him was murdered, a man who, whatever he was, was not Klein. But we know that the only motive for this deed was the blackmailing of Sir Anthony by Klein. Why, then, did Sir Anthony murder this other man?”

“Why,” put in Freyberger, “were those blackmailing letters left behind. We can imagine a novice capable of such a blunder, but the whole of this affair has been conducted with such terrible precision and coolness that we can scarcely consider its author capable of such a slip as that. May I speak, sir?”

“It seems to me you are speaking,” said the chief, with a smile. “Go on, Freyberger; I am always glad to hear your views.”

“Well, sir, it seems to me that there are many points in this case, each giving the lie to the other, each extraordinary. I have never come across such a chain of circumstances before. Accident might have cast all these extraordinary circumstances together. Gyde may have gone to murder his blackmailer, and found in the cottage, as well as his intended victim, a man very like himself. Gyde may have murdered this man for some reason or another and taken away his head; Gyde may have left those letters behind him from some extraordinary blunder. Klein may have given Gyde a written passport to his lodgings. Leloir, the valet, may simply have died of heart-disease. Gyde may have been a skilled anatomist, as well as a financier. All these are unlikely possibilities; each, taken separately would not, in itself, cause us so very much surprise, but taken en masse, the combination is almost impossible, viewed as a combination caused by chance.

“If chance did not place these things in juxtaposition to confound our powers of reasoning, what did?

“There is only one possible answer. The problem before us is the work of some subtle and profound intelligence, that, for reasons of its own, has committed a murder, and, for easily understandable reasons, has fouled the traces, so that we are at fault and in confusion.” Freyberger paused and then went on: “I believe, reviewing the facts, that this intelligence, with which we are trying to grapple, is not that of Sir Anthony Gyde.

“You see, if we admit him to be the murderer, we must admit him to have committed so many self-condemning faults. Going openly to the cottage, in a motor-car of all things; leaving the letters behind him to damn him and expose his motive; removing his victim’s head yet leaving the body behind; going to his house in Piccadilly; going to his bankers to take away his jewels, when he could, if he chose, have removed his jewels, collected his money, and, having made provision for his escape and his future, then murdered Klein.”

“One moment,” said the chief. “Gyde was a passionate man; he may have committed this murder in a fit of passion, and, in the upset of his brain, left those letters behind.”

“Yes,” said Freyberger. “But the hand that did the decapitation did not show any sign of brain-upset. Again, if a man murders another in hot blood does he decapitate him? Not as a rule. Let us suppose this head that of some unknown third party: of course, Gyde, if he were the murderer, may have had some powerful reason for removing the head; but why should he leave it in a cupboard in his own house in Piccadilly as another damning piece of evidence against himself? You will excuse me, sir, for speaking so long, but I wish to say this:

“The faults before us are the continuous chance blunders of an unimaginable fool, if we view them as the faults committed by Sir Anthony Gyde. Sir Anthony Gyde could not have committed them, we may say could not, for they are too many to have been committed by a man with any reason in his head, even though in criminal matters he is a fool.

“Well, then, we are driven upon the only other supposition; that Gyde had nothing to do with the murder, and that these seeming faults are really not faults, or in other words, they are faults committed purposely by some keen intelligence to bring confusion into the case. I think what I have said is almost mathematically demonstrable.

“I do not like to say any more, except this, that in my firm belief Sir Anthony Gyde is innocent.”

There was a murmur from the other men present, a murmur of admiration for the logical reasoning of the little German.

“Well,” said the chief, “your argument is clever. We must admit that, if Gyde is the murderer, then Gyde has committed more faults in the business than it is at all probable he would commit. If Gyde is not the murderer, then, some other man is; if that is so, I am bound to admit that this other man has not only successfully fouled his traces but has cast, in some extraordinary manner, the onus of the affair upon Gyde. The proof of that is,” he continued, with a short laugh, “he has made us issue a warrant for Gyde’s arrest. Have you anything more to say, Freyberger? What you have said already has been to the point.”

“Only this, sir. Dr Murrell is preparing the retina of the valet, Leloir. He intends photographing it by Mendel’s process. He may, or may not, succeed; the thing fails as a rule, or only gives the faintest blur of a picture. But it seems that the rods and cones of the retina take a far more powerful impression in a case like this, if the subject has caught his last glimpse of earthly things by the electric light. It is just possible that the retina of Leloir may give us a picture of what he saw before he died.”

“The only two successful cases of the kind I have heard of,” said the chief, “occurred in Germany.”

“That is true, sir,” replied Freyberger. “The case of Ludwig Baumer, recounted by Casper; and the case of the courtesan, Gretchen Dreschfeld, which Addeler, the professor of forensic medicine at Bonn, made such a success of.”

“When did Dr Murrell say his results would be known?” asked the chief.

“He did not say, sir; but, with your permission, I will call upon him now and see what hopes he can give us of a successful photograph.”

“Do so,” said the chief. And Freyberger departed.