VIII
FINGER-PRINTS
Hilton Toye was the kind of American who knew London as well as mostLondoners, and some other capitals a good deal better than theirrespective citizens of corresponding intelligence. His travels weremysteriously but enviably interwoven with business; he had an air ofenjoying himself, and at the same time making money to pay for hisenjoyment, wherever he went. His hotel days were much the same all overEurope: many appointments, but abundant leisure. As, however, he neverspoke about his own affairs unless they were also those of thelistener--and not always then--half his acquaintances had no idea howhe made his money, and the other half wondered how he spent his time. Ofhis mere interests, which were many, Toye made no such secret; but itwas quite impossible to deduce a main industry from the by-products ofhis level-headed versatility.
Criminology, for example, was an obvious by-product; it was no morbidtaste in Hilton Toye, but a scientific hobby that appealed to his mentalsubtlety. And subtle he was, yet with strange simplicities; grave anddignified, yet addicted to the expressive phraseology of his lessenlightened countrymen; naturally sincere, and yet always capable ofsome ingenuous duplicity.
The appeal of a Blanche Macnair to such a soul needs no analysis. Shehad struck through all complexities to the core, such as it was or asshe might make it. As yet she could only admire the character the manhad shown, though it had upset her none the less. At Engelberg he hadproposed to her "inside of two weeks," as he had admitted withoutcompunction at the time. It had taken him, he said, about two minutes tomake up his mind; but the following summer he had laid more deliberatesiege, in accordance with some old idea that she had let fall to softenher first refusal. The result had been the same, only more explicit onboth sides. She had denied him the least particle of hope, and he hadwarned her that she had not heard the last of him by any means, andnever would till she married another man. This had incensed her at thetime, but a great deal less on subsequent reflection; and such was theposition between that pair when Toye and Cazalet landed in England fromthe same steamer.
On this second day ashore, as Cazalet sat over a late breakfast inJermyn Street, Toye sent in his card and was permitted to follow it,rather to his surprise. He found his man frankly divided betweenkidneys-and-bacon and the morning paper, but in a hearty mood,indicative of amends for his great heat in yesterday's argument. Aplainer indication was the downright yet sunny manner in which Cazaletat once returned to the contentious topic.
"Well, my dear Toye, what do you think of it now?"
"What do you think of it now?"]
"I was going to ask you what you thought, but I guess I can see fromyour face."
"I think the police are rotters for not setting him free last night!"
"Scruton?"
"Yes. Of course, the case'll break down when it comes on next week, butthey oughtn't to wait for that. They've no right to detain a man incustody when the bottom's out of their case already."
"But--but the papers claim they've found the very things they weresearching for." Toye looked nonplused, as well he might, by anapparently perverse jubilation over such intelligence.
"They haven't found the missing cap!" crowed Cazalet. "What they havefound is Craven's watch and keys, and the silver-mounted truncheon thatkilled him. But they found them in a place where they couldn't possiblyhave been put by the man identified as Scruton!"
"Say, where was that?" asked Toye with great interest. "My paper onlysays the things were found, not where."
"No more does mine, but I can tell you, because I helped to find 'em."
"You don't say!"
"You'll never grasp where," continued Cazalet. "In the foundations underthe house!"
Details followed in all fulness; the listener might have had a part inthe Uplands act of yesterday's drama, might have played in the libraryscene with his adored Miss Blanche, so vividly was every minute of thatcrowded hour brought home to him. He also had seen the originalwriting-cupboard in Michelangelo's old Florentine house; he rememberedit perfectly, and said that he could see the replica, with its shelf ofa desk stacked with cigars, and the hole in its floor. He was not sosure that he had any very definite conception of the foundations of anEnglish house.
"Ours were like ever so many little tiny rooms," said Cazalet, "where Icouldn't stand nearly upright even as a small boy without giving my heada crack against the ground floors. They led into one another by a lot oflittle manholes--tight fits even for a boy, but nearly fatal to the bosspoliceman yesterday! I used to get in through one with a door, at theback of a slab in the cellars where they used to keep empty bottles;they keep 'em there still, because that's how I led my party out lastnight."
Cazalet's little gift of description was not ordered by an equal senseof selection. Hilton Toye, edging in his word in a pause for a gulp ofcoffee, said he guessed he visualized--but just where had those missingthings been found?
"Three or four compartments from the first one under the library," saidCazalet.
"Did you find them?"
"Well, I kicked against the truncheon, but Drinkwater dug it up. Thewatch and keys were with it."
"Say, were they buried?"
"Only in the loose rubble and brick-dusty stuff that you get infoundations."
"Say, that's bad! That murderer must have known something, or else it'sa bully fluke in his favor."
"I don't follow you, Toye."
"I'm thinking of finger-prints. If he'd just've laid those things rightdown, he'd have left the print of his hand as large as life for ScotlandYard."
"The devil he would!" exclaimed Cazalet. "I wish you'd explain," headded; "remember I'm a wild man from the woods, and only know of thesethings by the vaguest kind of hearsay and stray paragraphs in thepapers. I never knew you could leave your mark so easily as all that."
Toye took the breakfast menu and placed it face downward on thetablecloth. "Lay your hand on that, palm down," he said, "and don't moveit for a minute."
Cazalet looked at him a moment before complying; then his fine, shapely,sunburnt hand lay still as plaster under their eyes until Toye told himhe might take it up. Of course there was no mark whatever, and Cazaletlaughed.
"You should have caught me when I came up from those foundations, notfresh from my tub!" said he.
"You wait," replied Hilton Toye, taking the menu gingerly by the edge,and putting it out of harm's way in the empty toast-rack. "You can't seeanything now, but if you come round to the Savoy I'll show yousomething."
"What?"
"Your prints, sir! I don't say I'm Scotland Yard at the game, but I cando it well enough to show you how it's done. You haven't left your markupon the paper, but I guess you've left the sweat of your hand; if Isnow a little French chalk over it, the chalk'll stick where your handdid, and blow off easily everywhere else. The rest's as simple as allbig things. It's hanged a few folks already, but I judge it doesn't havemuch chance with things that have lain buried in brick-dust. Say, comeround to lunch and I'll have your prints ready for you. I'd like awfullyto show you how it's done. It would really be a great pleasure."
Cazalet excused himself with decision. He had a full morning in front ofhim. He was going to see Miss Macnair's brother, son of the late head ofhis father's old firm of solicitors, and now one of the partners, toget them either to take up Scruton's case themselves, or else torecommend a firm perhaps more accustomed to criminal practise. Cazaletwas always apt to be elaborate in the first person singular, either inthe past or in the future tense; but he was more so than usual inexplaining his considered intentions in this matter that lay so verynear his heart.
"Going to see Scruton, too?" said Toye.
"Not necessarily," was the short reply. But it also was elaborated byCazalet on a moment's consideration. The fact was that he wanted firstto know if it were not possible, by the intervention of a reallyinfluential lawyer, to obtain the prisoner's immediate release, at anyrate on bail. If impossible, he might hesitate to force himself onScruton in the
prison, but he would see.
"It's a perfect scandal that he should be there at all," said Cazalet,as he rose first and ushered Toye out into the lounge. "Only think: ourold gardener saw him run out of the drive at half past seven, when thegong went, when the real murderer must have been shivering in theMichelangelo cupboard, wondering how the devil he was ever going to getout again."
"Then you think old man Craven--begging his poor pardon--was getting outsome cigars when the man, whoever he was, came in and knocked him on thehead?"
Cazalet nodded vigorously. "That's the likeliest thing of all!" hecried. "Then the gong went--there may even have come a knock at thedoor--and there was that cupboard standing open at his elbow."
"With a hole in the floor that might have been made for him?"
"As it happens, yes; he'd search every inch like a rat in a trap, yousee; and there it was as I'd left it twenty years before."
"Well, it's a wonderful yarn!" exclaimed Hilton Toye, and he lighted thecigar that Cazalet had given him.
"I think it may be thought one if the police ever own how they madetheir find," agreed Cazalet, laughing and looking at his watch. Toye hadnever heard him laugh so often. "By the way, Drinkwater doesn't want anyof all this to come out until he's dragged his man before the beakagain."
"Which you mean to prevent?"
"If only I can! I more or less promised not to talk, however, and I'msure you won't. You knew so much already, you may just as well know therest this week as well as next, if you don't mind keeping it toyourself."
Nobody could have minded this particular embargo less than Hilton Toye;and in nothing was he less like Cazalet, who even now had thehalf-regretful and self-excusing air of the impulsive person who hastalked too freely and discovered it too late. But he had been perfectlydelightful to Hilton Toye, almost too appreciative, if anything, and nowvery anxious to give him a lift in his taxi. Toye, however, had shoppingto do in the very street that they were in, and he saw Cazalet off witha smile that was as yet merely puzzled, and not unfriendly until he hadtime to recall Miss Blanche's part in the strange affair of the previousafternoon.
Say, weren't they rather intimate, those two, even if they had knowneach other all their lives? He had it from Blanche (with her secondrefusal) that she was not, and never had been, engaged. And a fellow whoonly wrote to her once in a year--still, they must have been darnedintimate, and this funny affair would bring them together again quickerthan anything.
Say, what a funny affair it was when you came to think of it! Funny allthrough, it now struck Toye; beginning on board ship with that dream ofCazalet's about the murdered man, leading to all that talk of the oldgrievance against him, and culminating in his actually finding theimplements of the crime in his inspired efforts to save the man of whoseinnocence he was so positive. Say, if that Cazalet had not been on hisway home from Australia at the time!
Like many deliberate speakers, Toye thought like lightning, and hadreached this point before he was a hundred yards from the hotel; then hethought of something else, and retraced his steps. He retraced them evento the table at which he had sat with Cazalet not very many minutes ago;the waiter was only now beginning to clear away.
"Say, waiter, what have you done with the menu that was in thattoast-rack? There was something on it that we rather wanted to keep."
"I thought there was, sir," said the English waiter at that admirablehotel. Toye, however, prepared to talk to him like an American uncle ofDutch extraction.
"You thought that, and you took it away?"
"Not at all, sir. I 'appened to observe the other gentleman put themenu in his pocket, behind your back as you were getting up, because Ipassed a remark about it to the head waiter at the time!"