CHAPTER XVII

DR GUSTAVUS MURRELL lived in Sackville Street, Piccadilly. He was a man of private means, and he possessed a medical practice that brought him in about a thousand a year. One of those pleasant practices, where the lowest fee for looking at a tongue is a guinea, and for an operation fifty.

He was a tall, well-groomed, handsome man of forty-five or so, with a jovial blue eye and a hearty manner. You never would have imagined that one of the chief hobbies of this healthy and happy-looking individual was grubbing in the cesspit of crime. Yet it was.

Only one of his hobbies, for he had several, photography amongst the rest.

Though a dilettante of criminal acts and possessed of a profound penetrative power, as far as human motives were concerned, Dr Murrell was no amateur detective. He studied criminals just as a botanist studies fungi; they interested him, and he felt a sort of sympathy for them, that sympathy which we all feel, more or less, for the things that interest us.

He acted as police surgeon, because, in that position, he was brought into contact with the people who helped to constitute his hobby. But he never helped the police in the least, beyond the assistance that his position bound him in duty to give.

On several occasions he could have given the police a clue that would have helped them considerably in their work, yet he refrained. He was the police surgeon, but he did not feel himself bound to help the police beyond the help that his surgical knowledge was able to give.

In the case of the valet Leloir he did not care twopence whether the result of his investigations brought a criminal to justice or cleared up a mystery.

The thing was outside his province, and he embarked on it because he was a photographer.

Freyberger arrived at Sackville Street about six, and found Dr Murrell at home. The doctor was in his study, going over his case book, and he bade his visitor be seated.

“You have called about the case I saw this morning, I suppose?” said Dr Murrell. “Well, I have done what I said I would do. I have already removed the right eye, stripped the retina, exposed it and got a result; the picture is at present the size of a sixpence; my man is at work on it now; it is being reproduced and magnified enormously, under the rays of a five thousand candle-power arc-light. If you will call again to-night I will show you the ultimate result, larger than a cabinet-sized photograph.”

“You have got a picture?” said Freyberger.

“I have got a picture,” replied the other, “or fancy so, and, as I say, you will be able to see it to-night.”

“What time shall I call?” asked the detective.

“Oh, about ten.”

“The body has been removed to the mortuary?”

“Yes, it was there I took the eye, substituting a glass one. The inquest will be to-morrow, and, of course, the post-mortem. I expect the post-mortem will show that the man had a weak heart.”

“You think he died of heart failure?”

“I have told you already he died of terror; but I think the heart weakness was the secondary cause of his death. I see in the papers that a warrant is out for Sir Anthony Gyde. Have you caught him yet?”

“No,” said Freyberger, “and we never will.”

The other looked surprised.

“I have only skimmed through the report in the paper,” he said. “From it I gather that it is very clearly proved that he has murdered a man up in Cumberland.”

“You have not seen the head, then, that was found in his house in Piccadilly?”

“No, I was from home when they sent for me, and they called the Home Office expert in.”

Freyberger gave him all the details we know, and the doctor sat listening and tapping with his pencil on the desk.

“Well,” he said, when the other had finished, “you seem to have a pretty tangled skein to unravel; what I can show you to-night may help you or not. Call at ten; and now I must take leave of you, for I have another patient to see before dinner.”

Freyberger bowed himself out. He had almost four hours to wait before the appointment, and, having nothing particular to do, he determined to make the best use he could of the time at his disposal, and have dinner.

He first telephoned to the Yard the result of his interview with Dr Murrell, and then betook himself to a cheap restaurant in Soho, where he proceeded to revel in Sauerkraut and beef, served with stewed plums, slices of sausage and other Teutonic delicacies.

Throughout all the varied experiences of his life he had never felt so much excitement as just now, waiting for the result of this sleight of hand photography, this attempt to trick nature out of one of her darkest secrets.

It was exactly ten o’clock when he reached the house in Sackville Street, and was admitted.

The doctor was not at home, but he had given instructions that the detective should be admitted to his private laboratory, there to await him.

It was a large room at the back of the house, built on a space that had once been a yard. It had a top light and something of the general aspect of an artist’s studio.

R?ntgen ray apparatuses, cameras, all sorts of odds and ends lay about, speaking of the occupant’s bent.

Freyberger had not been waiting five minutes when the door opened, and Dr Murrell, in evening dress, entered.

He held a small parcel in his hand.

“Good evening,” he said. “My assistant was called away half an hour ago, and he left the result of his work for me; let’s see what it is.”

He undid the string from the parcel, and disclosed what at first sight appeared to be a large cabinet photograph.

He approached an electric light, bearing it in his hand; in the full glare of the light he examined it intently. Then he whistled softly to himself. He seemed quite lost in contemplation of the thing.

Freyberger, unable to contain his curiosity, came up behind the doctor and gazed over his shoulder at the photograph, mounted upon the card.

It was a large grey-coloured platinotype, showing a blurred and misty picture; it was the picture of a human face.

It was the face, the sight of which had killed, from sheer terror, the valet Leloir.

The arteries of the dead man’s retina had left their trace upon the photograph, but they did not blur the face; their tracery could be seen in the background, forming a sort of halo round the nebulous visage, that held the two gazers with a witchery all its own.

“That is the result,” said the doctor, laying the photograph on a table near by.

Freyberger moistened his lips.

“Scarcely pretty,” said Dr Murrell, taking a cigarette from a box near by and offering his companion one.

“It is a face to give one pause,” said Freyberger, lighting his cigarette in a meditative manner.

“I’m sure of this,” said Dr Murrell, leaning back against the mantelpiece and glancing sideways at the thing on the table, “that half of the impression that thing makes upon me is caused by the fact that I have the knowledge of how it was obtained.

“The fact of finding a man dead of terror and then finding that picture on his retina, is, I think, part of the reason why I feel—pretty sick.”

“It’s bad enough,” said Freyberger, bending over the table and staring at the thing.

“The other part of the reason is the thing itself.”

Freyberger continued gazing without a word.

“You seem in love with it.”

“I am studying it, stripping it of all its accessories. This is the portrait of a human face; it belonged to a person who was in the bedroom of Sir Anthony Gyde just before the death of Leloir; the sight of it killed Leloir, we may presume, from shock.”

“Yes.”

“Well, presumptions are sometimes wrong.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I am studying this face intently; it has all the features of an ordinary human, though very evil, face; in repose one may fancy it repulsive, but not especially alarming, certainly not alarming enough to kill a man from shock.”

“Yes?”

“It is the expression of the thing that constitutes its chief feature.”

“Yes.”

“What is that expression? It is a compound of alarm and hatred.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, coming to the table and glancing at the thing, and then returning to his post at the mantelpiece.

“Yes, I should say that is the expression—or at all events, a very good imitation of it.”

“Well,” went on the other, “from the expression on this face I construct the following hypothesis. Leloir suddenly entered his master’s bedroom and found a stranger there, a stranger to whom the face whose picture we see here belonged. He surprised him, perhaps, committing some act, to which we have no clue; anyhow, he surprised him. Hence the expression.”

“I can understand that causing the expression of alarm. How about the ferocious hatred we see here—”

“Mark you,” said Freyberger, “I did not say terror. I said alarm. If you have ever alarmed a man and been attacked by him, you will understand how closely allied alarm and hatred of the most ferocious description may be. I have experienced the fact several times, I assure you, in the course of my professional work.”

“I can imagine so.”

“Well, granting my supposition,” continued the other, “we may ask ourselves, what was this man doing when Leloir surprised him? It was not the face of the creature that killed Leloir with shock, we may presume, but the act he was committing. What was that act?”

“Trying to murder Gyde, perhaps, since it is known that Gyde was in the bedroom after the secretary heard that scream, which was evidently the scream of Leloir dying.”

“I have quite cast Gyde out of my mind,” said Freyberger. “I have quite come to the conclusion that Gyde has no more to do with this whole case than the child unborn. I am firmly convinced—mind, I say this to you privately—that the only criminal in this case is the man whom Gyde is supposed to have murdered, that is to say, the artist Klein, alias Kolbecker.

“I believe this face to be a portrait of Klein.

“I have no earthly idea yet of the full devilish ingenuity of the thing, but I feel assured that, whoever was murdered in the cottage on the fells of Cumberland, Klein is the murderer. Gyde may be alive, Gyde may be dead, but I feel assured of this, that Klein murdered a man, and has arranged matters so that the public believe that he is the victim and Gyde the assassin. Now I must go, for there is much work to be done. May I take this portrait with me; it is most important?”

“Certainly, if you will return it to me when you have done with it. I want it for my museum.”

“I will return it,” said Freyberger. He did it up in the brown paper, placed it in the pocket of his overcoat, and, bidding Doctor Murrell good night, departed.

In Piccadilly he hailed a cab and drove to Howland Street, to the house he had visited that afternoon.

On the way he reviewed many things in his mind.

He already had a theory. The theory that Gyde was innocent and Klein was the assassin; he had also a suspicion that Gyde was dead.

That this theory and suspicion cast the whole affair into deeper darkness was nothing if they were right.

Just now he felt that he was really coming to grips with that intelligence which, earlier in the day, he had dimly felt to be in antagonism with his own—the intelligence of the being whose terrible portrait was in his pocket.

The landlady’s husband opened the door in response to his knock.

He was a colourless and apathetic individual, who, when Freyberger introduced himself, showed him, without comment, into the fusty little sitting-room.

“I am sorry to trouble you,” said Freyberger, when the woman appeared, “but I have a portrait I wish to show you; it is, I believe, the portrait of Mr Kolbecker.” He undid the covering of the parcel and exposed the picture.

The woman looked at it.

“Do you recognize it?”

“No.”

Freyberger felt a chill of disappointment.

“And yet,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I dunno—I wouldn’t swear it wasn’t—but it’s different.”

“Yes, yes; of course, that picture would not represent him in his ordinary state of mind; but if he were terribly angry about something, might his face be like that?”

“I’ve never seen Mr Kolbecker put out; always most civil he was and paid his way regular; he wasn’t a beauty, but I never found him anything but a gentleman. Only just before he went away Mrs Stairs, who does the rooms of the gentleman lodgers, said to me, ‘Mrs Summers, that man do give me the creeps.’

“‘Which man?’ I says.

“‘The top-floor front,’ she replies.

“‘Mr Kolbecker?’ I said.

“‘Yes,’ she said, ‘the German.’

“‘Well,’ I replied to her, ‘as long as he don’t creep away without settling his bill, it’s all I cares about him.’”

“You think this might possibly be a portrait of Mr Kolbecker?”

“Well, I couldn’t swear to it,” said she, fixing her gaze again upon the thing. “At first, when you asked me, I’d have said not, but when I look longer it seems to me there’s a likeness, but if you wish to see what he was really like I can show you his photograph.”

“His photograph! Why did you not tell me you had one?”

“Because you never asked.”

“Of course, of course, it was my fault; but please, if you will be so kind, let me see it.”

She left the room, and returned with a small photograph in her hand. Freyberger almost snatched it from her, held it under the lamp and examined it.

It was somewhat faded, and at the bottom of the card appeared the photographer’s name and address.

“Gassard, 110 Boulevard St-Michel, Paris.”

He examined the face.

It was a face to give a physiognomist (to use Freyberger’s expression) pause. A face quite impossible to describe. One might say that the cheek bones were abnormally flat and the face very wide across them. That the nose was terribly pinched at the root; that the eyes were somewhat of the Mongolian type; all this would give no idea of the physiognomy upon which Freyberger’s eyes were fixed.

It was a repulsive face, even in repose, and the most distinctive thing about it was the expression, an expression cold and evil; a thoughtful expression, that made one shudder in trying to conjure up the thoughts that had given it birth; the expression of Osimandias, of the cruel and cold and the diabolically clever.

Between this faded photograph and the retinal picture there lay a world of difference, all the difference between a landscape seen in the calm of a still winter’s day and the same landscape tempest torn; yet they were pictures of the same person, and of this Freyberger felt sure.

He could fancy that brow suddenly contracted, those thin lips suddenly puffed out, those nostrils expanded and the whole reptile hatred of the demon-reptile brain suddenly writing itself in furious lines, speaking, shrieking aloud.

A feeling of triumph filled his breast; he had got one step further towards his antagonist.

He turned the back of the photograph to the light and examined it. There was no writing upon it; and yet, on closer examination, there were some indistinct scratches on the upper part, as though pencil writing had once been there and erased. On closer examination still, he could just make out what seemed a capital M, and close to the M some letters vaguely dented into the shiny card by the pressure of the pencil that had written whatever had been written and erased.

“Thank you,” said Freyberger, when he had finished his inspection of the thing. “This photograph is very interesting and it may help us considerably in our work. May I keep it?”

“Well,” said the woman, “it is not mine to give; it was found in Mr Kolbecker’s room by Mrs Stairs after he left for Cumberland, and she brought it to me. It’s no value to me, and if it will help you to find out who killed him you had better take it. Mind you, I look to you to see me righted, and I don’t want this house brought into the papers; it’s hard enough getting a living without getting a name for being mixed up in murders.”

“I will see that you don’t suffer in any way,” replied the other, “and I will give you a receipt for this photograph, just as I gave you one for those pieces of marble this afternoon.”

He wrote out a receipt on a sheet of paper torn from his notebook, and with the photograph in his possession left the house.

When he reached the Yard, it was a little after twelve.

The chief was absent, snatching a few hours’ sleep possibly, after a day of fourteen hours’ solid work, in which the consideration of the Gyde case had been only an item.

Inspector Dennison was in, and Freyberger found him and put the evidence he had collected in his hands.

Freyberger had that tremendous advantage which helps a man along in the world as much, or more, than industry or genius. He was a general favourite. A favourite, not because he was all things to all men, or gave the wall to any man, or truckled, or trimmed, or did anything small, so as to make himself pleasing. He was a favourite because he was straight and honest, always ready to help another man, ever ready to praise what seemed to him praiseworthy or criticize what seemed to him wrong. In fact, there was nothing small about him, except his person, and even that was not particularly small, just a shade under the middle size.

Inspector Dennison, a very big man, both physically and by reputation, liked the little German, and when Freyberger showed him his results he did not criticize them destructively. He went carefully through the matter of the photographs without showing the slightest surprise at the marvellous retinal picture.

He said he failed to see much resemblance between it and the French photograph, but that possibly, allowing for the vast difference in expression and the vagueness of the retinal picture, they might be photographs of the same person.

He did not recognize so fully as Freyberger the possibility of connexion between the hellish face and the subdued and self-contained face, but he recognized it.

“There is something on the back of this photograph I want to examine more attentively,” said Freyberger. “Something has been written with a pencil; the writing has been rubbed out, but the dent remains. Have you a lens, not a too powerful one?”

Dennison produced one from a drawer, and his companion took it and proceeded to examine the marks.

“I can make out an M, there is then a space, over the space there are two dots, a little further along occurs an l followed by—is it a t or an l? Ah! yes, it must be an l, though the loop is very indistinct; then occurs an i without a dot and an r. Thus:

“‘M .. llir.’”

“That doesn’t tell much,” said Dennison.

“No,” replied Freyberger, “but it tells me one thing.”

“What is that?”

“That whatever was written was not written in English.”

“How so?”

“Those two accentuating dots are never used in English. They are used sometimes—very rarely—in poetry, I believe, but we may suppose the writing on this to have been in prose.”

“Let’s suppose so,” said Dennison. “Though I’ve seen poetry written on the back of a photograph before this; it was in the case of a fellow called Buckingham. He’d given it to his girl, and the next thing he did was to murder her. His poetry hanged him.”

“I don’t know of any language,” said Freyberger, contemplatively, in which the combination llir might occur commonly; lir is, of course, common; llir most uncommon; suppose it is an e, though there is no perceptible loop—ller.

“That seems to me as uncommon as the other,” said Dennison.

“Ah!” cried Freyberger, suddenly, “I have it.”

“What?”

“See!”

Freyberger snatched a pen and wrote in large letters upon a sheet of paper—

“Müller.”

“By Jove, yes,” said Dennison, “that might be it.”

“I think it’s likely,” said the other. “First of all it’s a name, and a name is the most likely thing to be written on a photograph. Then the thing constructs itself easily. Dennison, without those two dots, the idea would not have occurred to me. Those two dots may be the means of finding our man. Another point, the writing, whatever it was, formed a single word, and that word was erased.

“Now, what form of a single word is most likely to be carefully erased? The name of a person, I think?”

“That is so.”

“I’m going home to bed now,” said Freyberger, “to get a few hours’ sleep, but before I go I will ring up Paris.”

“Yes,” said Dennison, “it’s well to give them all the facts now, and they can make inquiries first thing in the morning.”

“The thing I’m bothered about,” said Freyberger, “is that I don’t know whether Gassard is still in the Boulevard St-Michel. I was over there two months ago on that bank-note forgery case, and I routed out all the photographers in the Latin Quarter. I had a long list. If Gassard’s name had been on that list, I almost think it would have sprung alive into my head on reading it on this photo, for I have a memory that is not so bad.”

He went to the telephone and rang up the Prefecture of Police. The reply call did not come for five minutes. Then Freyberger put his ear to the receiver.

A thin, acidulous voice came through the humming of the wires.

“I wish,” said Freyberger, speaking in excellent French, “to make some inquiries as to M. Gassard, photographer, of Boulevard St-Michel. I wish to know if he is still in business, and, if not, where he is to be found,—Freyberger, Inspector, Scotland Yard.”

The answer did not come for ten minutes.

Then the bell rang and the thin voice replied.

“Gassard, of 110 Boulevard St-Michel, sold his business three years ago. March 10, 19—, he left Paris. We have no trace of him. He was succeeded by Madame——, a modiste.”

“Luck is against us,” said Freyberger, hanging up the receiver. “Never mind, we have the name, and a name is a good deal in a case like this.”