CHAPTER IX
The moment she passed though the great arched door which admits thestranger to that portion of New Scotland Yard where throbs the heartof that great organism which fights the forces of civilised crime,Daisy Bunting felt that she had indeed become free of the Kingdom ofRomance. Even the lift in which the three of them were whirled upto one of the upper floors of the huge building was to the girl anew and delightful experience. Daisy had always lived a simple,quiet life in the little country town where dwelt Old Aunt and thiswas the first time a lift had come her way.
With a touch of personal pride in the vast building, Joe Chandlermarched his friends down a wide, airy corridor.
Daisy clung to her father's arm, a little bewildered, a littleoppressed by her good fortune. Her happy young voice wasstilled by the awe she felt at the wonderful place where shefound herself, and by the glimpses she caught of great rooms fullof busy, silent men engaged in unravelling--or so she supposed--the mysteries of crime.
They were passing a half-open door when Chandler suddenly stoppedshort. "Look in there," he said, in a low voice, addressing thefather rather than the daughter, "that's the Finger-Print Room.We've records here of over two hundred thousand men's and women'sfinger-tips! I expect you know, Mr. Bunting, as how, once we've gotthe print of a man's five finger-tips, well, he's done for--if heever does anything else, that is. Once we've got that bit of himregistered he can't never escape us--no, not if he tries ever so.But though there's nigh on a quarter of a million records in there,yet it don't take--well, not half an hour, for them to tellwhether any particular man has ever been convicted before! Wonderfulthought, ain't it?"
"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing a deep breath. And then atroubled look came over his stolid face. "Wonderful, but also avery fearful thought for the poor wretches as has got theirfinger-prints in, Joe."
Joe laughed. "Agreed!" he said. "And the cleverer ones knows thatonly too well. Why, not long ago, one man who knew his record washere safe, managed to slash about his fingers something awful, justso as to make a blurred impression--you takes my meaning? Butthere, at the end of six weeks the skin grew all right again, andin exactly the same little creases as before!"
"Poor devil!" said Bunting under his breath, and a cloud even cameover Daisy's bright eager face.
They were now going along a narrower passage, and then again theycame to a half-open door, leading into a room far smaller thanthat of the Finger-Print Identification Room.
"If you'll glance in there," said Joe briefly, "you'll see how wefinds out all about any man whose finger-tips has given him away, soto speak. It's here we keeps an account of what he's done, hisprevious convictions, and so on. His finger-tips are where I toldyou, and his record in there--just connected by a number."
"Wonderful!" said Bunting, drawing in his breath. But Daisy waslonging to get on--to get to the Black Museum. All this that Joeand her father were saying was quite unreal to her, and, for thematter of that not worth taking the trouble to understand. However,she had not long to wait.
A broad-shouldered, pleasant-looking young fellow, who seemed onvery friendly terms with Joe Chandler, came forward suddenly, and,unlocking a common-place-looking door, ushered the little party ofthree through into the Black Museum.
For a moment there came across Daisy a feeling of keen disappointmentand surprise. This big, light room simply reminded her of what theycalled the Science Room in the public library of the town where shelived with Old Aunt. Here, as there, the centre was taken up withplain glass cases fixed at a height from the floor which enabledtheir contents to be looked at closely.
She walked forward and peered into the case nearest the door. Theexhibits shown there were mostly small, shabby-looking little things,the sort of things one might turn out of an old rubbish cupboard inan untidy house--old medicine bottles, a soiled neckerchief, whatlooked like a child's broken lantern, even a box of pills. . .
As for the walls, they were covered with the queerest-lookingobjects; bits of old iron, odd-looking things made of wood andleather, and so on.
It was really rather disappointing.
Then Daisy Bunting gradually became aware that standing on a shelfjust below the first of the broad, spacious windows which made thegreat room look so light and shadowless, was a row of life-sizewhite plaster heads, each head slightly inclined to the right.There were about a dozen of these, not more--and they had such odd,staring, helpless, real-looking faces.
"Whatever's those?" asked Bunting in a low voice.
Daisy clung a thought closer to her father's arm. Even she guessedthat these strange, pathetic, staring faces were the death-masks ofthose men and women who had fulfilled the awful law which ordainsthat the murderer shall be, in his turn, done to death.
"All hanged!" said the guardian of the Black Museum briefly. "Caststaken after death."
Bunting smiled nervously. "They don't look dead somehow. Theylooks more as if they were listening," he said.
"That's the fault of Jack Ketch," said the man facetiously. "It'shis idea--that of knotting his patient's necktie under the leftear! That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he hasto act valet on just one occasion only. It makes them lean just abit to one side. You look here--?"
Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointedwith his finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of eachneck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow,well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had beendrawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or--or hurt," saidBunting wonderingly.
He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staringfaces.
But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice,"Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all hisplans brought to naught--and knowing he's only got a second to live--now wouldn't he?"
"Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
Daisy had gone a little pale. The sinister, breathless atmosphereof the place was beginning to tell on her. She now began tounderstand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glasscase close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidencewhich, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or womanto the gallows.
"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardiansuddenly; "one of those Brahmins--so they calls themselves. Well,you'd a been quite surprised to see how that heathen took on! Hedeclared--what was the word he used?"--he turned to Chandler.
"He said that each of these things, with the exception of the casts,mind you--queer to say, he left them out--exuded evil, that wasthe word he used! Exuded--squeezed out it means. He said thatbeing here made him feel very bad. And twasn't all nonsense either.He turned quite green under his yellow skin, and we had to shove himout quick. He didn't feel better till he'd got right to the otherend of the passage!"
"There now! Who'd ever think of that?" said Bunting. "I should saythat man 'ud got something on his conscience, wouldn't you?"
"Well, I needn't stay now," said Joe's good-natured friend. "Youshow your friends round, Chandler. You knows the place nearly aswell as I do, don't you?"
He smiled at Joe's visitors, as if to say good-bye, but it seemedthat he could not tear himself away after all.
"Look here," he said to Bunting. "In this here little case are thetools of Charles Peace. I expect you've heard of him."
"I should think I have!" cried Bunting eagerly.
"Many gents as comes here thinks this case the most interesting ofall. Peace was such a wonderful man! A great inventor they say hewould have been, had he been put in the way of it. Here's hisladder; you see it folds up quite compactly, and makes a nice littlebundle--just like a bundle of old sticks any man might have beenseen carrying about London in those days without attracting anyattention. Why, it probably helped him to look like an honestworking man time and time again, for on being arrested he d
eclaredmost solemnly he'd always carried that ladder openly under his arm."
"The daring of that!" cried Bunting.
"Yes, and when the ladder was opened out it could reach from theground to the second storey of any old house. And, oh! how cleverhe was! Just open one section, and you see the other sections openautomatically; so Peace could stand on the ground and force thething quietly up to any window he wished to reach. Then he'd goaway again, having done his job, with a mere bundle of old woodunder his arm! My word, he was artful! I wonder if you've heardthe tale of how Peace once lost a finger. Well, he guessed theconstables were instructed to look out for a man missing a finger;so what did he do?"
"Put on a false finger," suggested Bunting.
"No, indeed! Peace made up his mind just to do without a handaltogether. Here's his false stump: you see, it's made of wood--wood and black felt? Well, that just held his hand nicely.Why, we considers that one of the most ingenious contrivances inthe whole museum."
Meanwhile, Daisy had let go her hold of her father. With Chandlerin delighted attendance, she had moved away to the farther end ofthe great room, and now she was bending over yet another glass case."Whatever are those little bottles for?" she asked wonderingly.
There were five small phials, filled with varying quantities ofcloudy liquids.
"They're full of poison, Miss Daisy, that's what they are. There'senough arsenic in that little whack o' brandy to do for you and me--aye, and for your father as well, I should say."
"Then chemists shouldn't sell such stuff," said Daisy, smiling.Poison was so remote from herself, that the sight of these littlebottles only brought a pleasant thrill.
"No more they don't. That was sneaked out of a flypaper, that was.Lady said she wanted a cosmetic for her complexion, but what she wasreally going for was flypapers for to do away with her husband.She'd got a bit tired of him, I suspect."
"Perhaps he was a horrid man, and deserved to be done away with,"said Daisy. The idea struck them both as so very comic that theybegan to laugh aloud in unison.
"Did you ever hear what a certain Mrs. Pearce did?" asked Chandler,becoming suddenly serious.
"Oh, yes," said Daisy, and she shuddered a little. "That was thewicked, wicked woman what killed a pretty little baby and its mother.They've got her in Madame Tussaud's. But Ellen, she won't let me goto the Chamber of Horrors. She wouldn't let father take me therelast time I was in London. Cruel of her, I called it. But somehowI don't feel as if I wanted to go there now, after having been here!"
"Well," said Chandler slowly, "we've a case full of relics of Mrs.Pearce. But the pram the bodies were found in, that's at MadameTussaud's--at least so they claim, I can't say. Now here's somethingjust as curious, and not near so dreadful. See that man's jacketthere?"
"Yes," said Daisy falteringly. She was beginning to feel oppressed,frightened. She no longer wondered that the Indian gentleman hadbeen taken queer.
"A burglar shot a man dead who'd disturbed him, and by mistake hewent and left that jacket behind him. Our people noticed that oneof the buttons was broken in two. Well, that don't seem much of aclue, does it, Miss Daisy? Will you believe me when I tells youthat that other bit of button was discovered, and that it hangedthe fellow? And 'twas the more wonderful because all three buttonswas different!"
Daisy stared wonderingly, down at the little broken button whichhad hung a man. "And whatever's that!" she asked, pointing to apiece of dirty-looking stuff.
"Well," said Chandler reluctantly, "that's rather a horrible thing--that is. That's a bit o' shirt that was buried with a woman--buried in the ground, I mean--after her husband had cut her up andtried, to burn her. 'Twas that bit o' shirt that brought him to thegallows."
"I considers your museum's a very horrid place!" said Daisypettishly, turning away.
She longed to be out in the passage again, away from this brightlylighted, cheerful-looking, sinister room.
But her father was now absorbed in the case containing various typesof infernal machines. "Beautiful little works of art some of themare," said his guide eagerly, and Bunting could not but agree.
"Come along--do, father!" said Daisy quickly. "I've seen aboutenough now. If I was to stay in here much longer it 'ud give methe horrors. I don't want to have no nightmares to-night. It'sdreadful to think there are so many wicked people in the world.Why, we might knock up against some murderer any minute withoutknowing it, mightn't we?"
"Not you, Miss Daisy," said Chandler smilingly. "I don't supposeyou'll ever come across even a common swindler, let alone anyonewho's committed a murder--not one in a million does that. Why,even I have never had anything to do with a proper murder case!"
But Bunting was in no hurry. He was thoroughly enjoying everymoment of the time. Just now he was studying intently the variousphotographs which hung on the walls of the Black Museum; especiallywas he pleased to see those connected with a famous and stillmysterious case which had taken place not long before in Scotland,and in which the servant of the man who died had played aconsiderable part--not in elucidating, but in obscuring, the mystery.
"I suppose a good many murderers get off?" he said musingly.
And Joe Chandler's friend nodded. "I should think they did!" heexclaimed. "There's no such thing as justice here in England.'Tis odds on the murderer every time. 'Tisn't one in ten thatcome to the end he should do--to the gallows, that is."
"And what d'you think about what's going on now--I mean aboutthose Avenger murders?"
Bunting lowered his voice, but Daisy and Chandler were alreadymoving towards the door.
"I don't believe he'll ever be caught," said the otherconfidentially. "In some ways 'tis a lot more of a job to catch amadman than 'tis to run down just an ordinary criminal. And, ofcourse--leastways to my thinking--The Avenger is a madman--oneof the cunning, quiet sort. Have you heard about the letter?" hisvoice dropped lower.
"No," said Bunting, staring eagerly at him. "What letter d'youmean?"
"Well, there's a letter--it'll be in this museum some day--whichcame just before that last double event. 'Twas signed 'The Avenger,'in just the same printed characters as on that bit of paper he alwaysleaves behind him. Mind you, it don't follow that it actually was TheAvenger what sent that letter here, but it looks uncommonly like it,and I know that the Boss attaches quite a lot of importance to it."
"And where was it posted?" asked Bunting. "That might be a bit of aclue, you know."
"Oh, no," said the other. "They always goes a very long way topost anything--criminals do. It stands to reason they would. Butthis particular one was put in the Edgware Road Post Office."
"What? Close to us?" said Bunting. "Goodness! dreadful!"
"Any of us might knock up against him any minute. I don't supposeThe Avenger's in any way peculiar-looking--in fact we know he ain't."
"Then you think that woman as says she saw him did see him?" askedBunting hesitatingly.
"Our description was made up from what she said," answered the othercautiously. "But, there, you can't tell! In a case like that it'sgroping--groping in the dark all the time--and it's just a luckyaccident if it comes out right in the end. Of course, it's upsettingus all very much here. You can't wonder at that!"
"No, indeed," said Bunting quickly. "I give you my word, I've hardlythought of anything else for the last month."
Daisy had disappeared, and when her father joined her in the passageshe was listening, with downcast eyes, to what Joe Chandler wassaying.
He was telling her about his real home, of the place where his motherlived, at Richmond--that it was a nice little house, close to thepark. He was asking her whether she could manage to come out thereone afternoon, explaining that his mother would give them tea, andhow nice it would be.
"I don't see why Ellen shouldn't let me," the girl said rebelliously."But she's that old-fashioned and pernickety is Ellen--a regularold maid! And, you see, Mr. Chandler, when I'm staying with them,father don't like for me to do anything that Ellen don't approve of.But
she's got quite fond of you, so perhaps if you ask her--?"She looked at him, and he nodded sagely.
"Don't you be afraid," he said confidently. "I'll get round Mrs.Bunting. But, Miss Daisy"--he grew very red--"I'd just like toask you a question--no offence meant--"
"Yes?" said Daisy a little breathlessly. "There's father close tous, Mr. Chandler. Tell me quick; what is it?"
"Well, I take it, by what you said just now, that you've neverwalked out with any young fellow?"
Daisy hesitated a moment; then a very pretty dimple came into hercheek. "No," she said sadly. "No, Mr. Chandler, that I have not."In a burst of candour she added, "You see, I never had the chance!"
And Joe Chandler smiled, well pleased.