II
"NUMBER ONE"
It was more than a week after the funeral of my poor friend HumphreyChalloner that I paid my first regular visit of inspection to his house.I had been the only intimate friend of this lonely, self-contained manand he had made me not only his sole executor but his principal legatee.With the exception of a sum of money to endow an Institute of CriminalAnthropology, he had made me the heir to his entire estate, includinghis museum. The latter bequest was unencumbered by any conditions. Icould keep the collection intact, I could sell it as it stood or I couldbreak it up and distribute the specimens as I chose; but I knew thatChalloner's unexpressed wish was that it should be kept together,ultimately to form the nucleus of a collection attached to theInstitute.
It was a gray autumn afternoon when I let myself in. A caretaker was incharge of the house, which was otherwise unoccupied, and the museum,which was in a separate wing, seemed strangely silent and remote. As theYale latch of the massive door clicked behind me, I seemed to be, and infact was, cut off from all the world. A mysterious, sepulchral stillnesspervaded the place, and when I entered the long room I found myselfunconsciously treading lightly so as not to disturb the silence; even asone might on entering some Egyptian tomb-chamber hidden in the heart ofa pyramid.
I halted in the center of the long room and looked about me, and I don'tmind confessing that I felt distinctly creepy. It was not the skeletonof the whale that hung overhead, with its ample but ungenial smile; itwas not the bandy-legged skeleton of the rachitic camel, nor that of theaurochs, nor those of the apes and jackals and porcupines in the smallerglass case; nor the skulls that grinned from the case at the end of theroom. It was the long row of human skeletons, each erect and watchful onits little pedestal, that occupied the great wall-case: a silent,motionless company of fleshless sentinels, standing in easy postureswith unchanging, mirthless grins and seeming to wait for something. Thatwas what disturbed me.
I am not an impressionable man; and, as a medical practitioner, it isneedless to say that mere bones have no terrors for me. The skeletonfrom which I worked as a student was kept in my bedroom, and I minded itno more than I minded the plates in "Gray's Anatomy." I could have sleptcomfortably in the Hunterian Museum--other circumstances beingfavorable; and even the gigantic skeleton of Corporal O'Brian--whichgraces that collection--with that of his companion, the quaint littledwarf, thrown in, would not have disturbed my rest in the smallestdegree. But this was different. I had the feeling, as I had had before,that there was something queer about this museum of Challoner's.
I walked slowly along the great wall-case, looking in at the specimens;and in the dull light, each seemed to look out at me as I passed with aquestioning expression in his shadowy eye-sockets, as if he would ask,"Do you know who I was?" It made me quite uncomfortable.
There were twenty-five of them in all. Each stood on a small blackpedestal on which was painted in white a number and a date; exceptingone at the end, which had a scarlet pedestal and gold lettering. Number1 bore the date 20th September, 1889, and Number 25 (the one with thered pedestal) was dated 13th May, 1909. I looked at this last onecuriously; a massive figure with traces of great muscularity, a broad,Mongoloid head with large cheekbones and square eye-sockets. Aformidable fellow he must have been; and even now, the broad, squareface grinned out savagely from the case.
I turned away with something of a shudder. I had not come here to get"the creeps." I had come for Challoner's journal, or the "MuseumArchives" as he called it. The volumes were in the secret cupboard atthe end of the room and I had to take out the movable panel to get atthem. This presented no difficulty. I found the rosettes that moved thecatches and had the panel out in a twinkling. The cupboard was five feethigh by four broad and had a well in the bottom covered by a lid, whichI lifted and, to my amazement, found the cavity filled with revolvers,automatic pistols, life-preservers, knuckle-dusters and other weapons,each having a little label--bearing a number and a date--tied neatly onit. I shut the lid down rather hastily; there was something rathersinister in that collection of lethal appliances.
The volumes, seven in number, were on the top shelf, uniformly bound inRussia leather and labeled, respectively, "Photographs,""Finger-prints," "Catalogue," and four volumes of "Museum Archives." Iwas about to reach down the catalogue when my eye fell on the pile ofshallow boxes on the next shelf. I knew what they contained and recalleduncomfortably the strange impression that their contents had made on me;and yet a sort of fascination led me to take down the top one--labelled"Series B 5"--and raise the lid. But if those dreadful dolls' heads hadstruck me as uncanny when poor Challoner showed them to me, they nowseemed positively appalling. Small as they were--and they were not aslarge as a woman's fist--they looked so life-like--or rather, sodeath-like--that they suggested nothing so much as actual human headsseen through the wrong end of a telescope. There were five in this box,each in a separate compartment lined with black velvet and distinguishedby a black label with white lettering; excepting the central one, whichrested on scarlet velvet and had a red label inscribed in gold "13thMay, 1909."
I gazed at this tiny head in its scarlet setting with shudderingfascination. It had a hideous little face; a broad, brutal face of theTartar type; and the mop of gray-brown hair, so unhuman in color, andthe bristling mustache that stood up like a cat's whiskers, gave it anaspect half animal, half devilish. I clapped the lid on the box, thrustit back on the shelf, and, plucking down the first volume of the"Archives," hurried out of the museum.
That night, when I had rounded up the day's work with a good dinner, Iretired to my study, and, drawing an armchair up to the fire, openedthe volume. It was a strange document. At first I was unable to perceivethe relevancy of the matter to the title, for it seemed to be a journalof Challoner's private life; but later I began to see the connection, torealize, as Challoner had said, that the collection was nothing morethan a visible commentary on and illustration of his daily activities.
The volume opened with an account of the murder of his wife and thecircumstances leading up to it, written with a dry circumstantialitythat was to me infinitely pathetic. It was the forced impassiveness of astrong man whose heart is breaking. There were no comments, noexclamations; merely a formal recital of facts, exhaustive, literal andprecise. I need not quote it, as it only repeated the story he had toldme, but I will commence my extract at the point where he broke off. Thestyle, as will be seen, is that of a continuous narrative, apparentlycompiled from a diary; and, as it proceeds, marking the lapse of time,the original dryness of manner gives place to one more animated, morein keeping with the temperament of the writer.
"When I had buried my dear wife, I waited with some impatience to seewhat the police would do. I had no great expectations. The Englishpolice system is more adjusted to offences against property than tothose against the person. Nothing had been stolen, so nothing could betraced; and the clues were certainly very slight. It soon became evidentto me that the authorities had given the case up. They gave me no hopethat the murderer would ever be identified; and, in fact, it was prettyobvious that they had written the case off as hopeless and ceased tointerest themselves in it.
"Of course I could not accept this view. My wife had been murdered. Themurder was without extenuation. It had been committed lightly to cover apaltry theft. Now, for murder, no restitution is possible. But there isan appropriate forfeit to be paid; and if the authorities failed toexact it, then the duty of its exaction devolved upon me. Moreover, aperson who thus lightly commits murder as an incident in his calling isunfit to live in a community of human beings. It was clearly my duty asa good citizen to see that this dangerous person was eliminated.
"This was well enough in theory, but its realization in practicepresented considerable difficulties. The police had (presumably)searched for this person and failed to find him. How was I, untrained inmethods of detection, to succeed where the experts had been baffled? Iconsidered my resources. They consisted of a silver teapot and a s
alverwhich had been handled by the murderer and which, together, yielded acomplete set of finger-prints, and the wisp of hair that I had takenfrom the hand of my murdered wife. It is true that the police also hadfinger-marked plate and the remainder of the hair and had been unable toachieve anything by their means; but the value of finger-impressions forthe purposes of identification is not yet appreciated outside scientificcircles.[1] I fetched the teapot and salver from the drawer in which Ihad secured them and examined them afresh. The teapot had been held inboth hands and bore a full set of prints; and these were supplementedby the salver. For greater security I photographed the whole set of thefinger-impressions and made platinotype prints which I filed for futurereference. Then I turned my attention to the hair. I had already noticedthat it was of a dull gray color, but now, when I came to look at itmore closely, I found the color so peculiar that I took it to the windowand examined it with a lens.
[Footnote 1: The narrative seems to have been written in 1890.--L.W.]
"The result was a most startling discovery. It was ringed hair. The grayappearance was due, not to the usual mingling of white and dark hairs,but to the fact that each separate hair was marked by alternate rings ofblack and white. Now, variegated hairs are common enough in the loweranimals which have a pattern on the fur. The tabby cat furnishes afamiliar example. But in man the condition is infinitely rare; whence itwas obvious that, with these hairs and the finger-prints, I had themeans of infallible identification. But identification involvespossession of the person to be identified. There was the difficulty. Howwas it to be overcome?
"Criminals are vermin. They have the typical characters of vermin;unproductive activity combined with disproportionate destructiveness.Just as a rat will gnaw his way through a Holbein panel, or shred up theVatican Codex to make a nest, so the professional criminal will meltdown priceless medieval plate to sell in lumps for a few shillings. Theanalogy is perfect.
"Now, how do we deal with vermin--with the rat, for instance?
"Do we go down his burrow and reason with him? Do we strive to elevatehis moral outlook? Not at all. We induce him to come out. And when hehas come out, we see to it that he doesn't go back. In short, we set atrap. And if the rat that we catch is not the one that we wanted, we setit again.
"Precisely. That was the method.
"My housemaid had absconded at the time of the murder; she was evidentlyan accomplice of the murderer. My cook had left on the same day, havingconceived a not unnatural horror of the house. Since then I had madeshift with a charwoman. But I should want a housemaid and a cook, andif I acted judiciously in the matter of references, I might get the sortof persons who would help my plans. For there are female rats as well asmale.
"But there were certain preliminary measures to be taken. My physicalcondition had to be attended to. As a young man I was a first-classathlete, and even now I was strong and exceedingly active. But I mustget into training and brush up my wrestling and boxing. Then I must fitup some burglar alarms, lay in a few little necessaries and providemyself with a suitable appliance for dealing with the 'catch.'
"This latter I proceeded with at once. To the end of a rod of rhinoceroshorn about two feet long I affixed a knob of lead weighing two pounds. Icovered the knob with a thickish layer of plaited horsehair, and overthis fastened a covering of stout leather; and when I had fitted it witha wrist-strap it looked a really serviceable tool. Its purpose isobvious. It was an improved form of that very crude appliance, thesand-bag, which footpads use to produce concussion of the brain withoutfracturing the skull. I may describe it as a concussor.
"The preliminary measures were proceeding steadily. I had put in afortnight's attendance at a gymnasium under the supervision of ProfessorSchneipp, the Bavarian Hercules; I had practiced the most approved'knock-outs' known to my instructor, the famous pugilist, MelchizedeckCohen (popularly known as 'Slimy' Cohen); I had given up an hour a dayto studying the management of the concussor with the aid of apunching-ball; the alarms were ready for fixing, and I even had theaddress of an undoubtedly disreputable housemaid, when a most unexpectedthing happened. I got a premature bite. A fellow actually walked intothe trap without troubling me to set it.
"It befell thus. I had gone to bed rather early and fallen asleep atonce, but about one o'clock I awoke with that unmistakable completenessthat heralds a sleepless night. I lit my candle-lamp and looked round forthe book that I had been reading in the evening, and then I rememberedthat I had left it in the museum. Now that book had interested medeeply. It contained the only lucid description that I had met with ofthe Mundurucu Indians and their curious method of preserving the severedheads of their enemies; a method by which the head--after removal of thebones--was shrunk until it was no larger than a man's fist.
"I got up, and, taking my lamp and keys, made my way to the museum wingof the house, which opened out of the dining-room. I found the book,but, instead of returning immediately, lingered in the museum, lookingabout the great room and at the unfinished collection and gloomilyrecalling its associations. The museum was a gift from my wife. She hadbuilt it and the big laboratory soon after we were married and many adelightful hour we had spent in it together, arranging the new specimensin the cases. I did not allow her to work in the evil-smellinglaboratory, but she had a collection of her own, of land and fresh-watershells (which were cleaner to handle than the bones); and I was pullingout some of the drawers in her cabinet, and, as I looked over theshells, thinking of the happy days when we rambled by the riverside orover furzy commons in search of them, when I became aware of faintsounds of movement from the direction of the dining-room.
"I stepped lightly down the corridor that led to the dining-room andlistened. The door of communication was shut, but through it I coulddistinctly hear someone moving about and could occasionally detect thechink of metal. I ran back to the museum--my felt-soled bedroom slippersmade no sound--and, taking the 'concussor' from the drawer in which Ihad concealed it, thrust it through the waist-band of my pajamas. Then Icrept back to the door.
"The sounds had now ceased. I inferred that the burglar--for he could benone other--had gone to the pantry, where the plate-chest was kept. Onthis I turned the Yale latch and softly opened the door. It is my habitto keep all locks and hinges thoroughly oiled, and consequently the dooropened without a sound. There was no one in the dining-room; but oneburner of the gas was alight and various articles of silver plate werelaid on the table, just as they had been when my wife was murdered. Idrew the museum door to--I could not shut it because of the noise thespring latch would have made--and slipped behind a Japanese screen thatstood near the dining-room door. I had just taken my place when astealthy footstep approached along the hall. It entered the room andthen there was a faint clink of metal. I peeped cautiously round thescreen and looked on the back of a man who was standing by the table onwhich he was noiselessly depositing a number of spoons and forks and acandlestick. Although his back was towards me, a mirror on the oppositewall gave me a good view of his face; a wooden, expressionless face,such as I have since learned to associate with the English habitualcriminal; the penal servitude face, in fact.
"He was a careful operator. He turned over each piece thoroughly,weighing it in his hand and giving especial attention to the hall-mark.And, as I watched him, the thought came into my mind that, perchance,this was the very wretch who had murdered my wife, come back for thespoil that he had then had to abandon. It was quite possible, evenlikely, and at the thought I felt my cheeks flush and a strange, fiercepleasure, such as I had never felt before, swept into my consciousness.I could have laughed aloud, but I did not. Also, I could have knockedhim down with perfect ease as he stood, but I did not. Why did I not?Was it a vague, sporting sense of fairness? Or was it a catlike instinctimpelling me to play with my quarry? I cannot say. Only I know that theidea of dealing him a blow from behind did not attract me.
"Presently he shuffled away (in list slippers) to fetch a fresh cargo.Then some ferociously playful impulse led me
to steal out of myhiding-place and gather up a number of spoons and forks, a salt-cellar,a candlestick and an entree-dish and retire again behind the screen.Then my friend returned with a fresh consignment; and as he wasanxiously looking over the fresh pieces, I crept silently out at theother end of the screen, out of the open doorway and down the hall tothe pantry. Here a lighted candle showed the plate-chest open and halfempty, with a few pieces of plate on a side table. Quickly but silentlyI replaced in the chest the spoons and other pieces that I hadcollected, and then stole back to my place behind the screen and resumedmy observations.
"My guest was quite absorbed in his task. He had a habit--common, Ibelieve, among 'old lags'--of talking to himself; and very poor stuffhis conversation was, though it was better than his arithmetic, as Igathered from his attempts to compute the weight of the booty. Anon, heretired for another consignment, and once more I came out and gatheredup a little selection from his stock; and when he returned laden withspoil, I went off, as before, and put the articles back in theplate-chest.
"These manoeuvres were repeated a quite incredible number of times. Theman must have been an abject blockhead, as I believe most professionalcriminals are. His lack of observation was astounding. It is true thathe began to be surprised and rather bewildered. He even noted that'there seemed a bloomin' lot of 'em;' and the quality of hisarithmetical feats and his verbal enrichments became, alike,increasingly lurid. I believe he would have gone on until daylight if Ihad not tried him too often with a Queen Anne teapot. It was thatteapot, with its conspicuous urn design, that finally disillusioned him.I had just returned from putting it back in the chest for the third timewhen he missed it; and he announced the discovery with a profusion ofperfectly unnecessary and highly inappropriate adjectives.
"'Naa, then!' he exclaimed truculently, 'where's that blimy teapot goneto? Hay? I put that there teapot down inside that there hontry-dish--andwhere's the bloomin' hontry? Bust me if that ain't gone to!'
"He stood by the table scratching his bristly head and looking thepicture of ludicrous bewilderment. I watched him and meanwhile debatedwhether or not I should take the opportunity to knock him down. That wasundoubtedly the proper course. But I could not bring myself to do it. Aspirit of wild mischief possessed me; a strange, unnatural buoyancy andfierce playfulness that impelled me to play insane, fantastic tricks.It was a singular phenomenon. I seemed suddenly to have made theacquaintance of a hitherto unknown moiety of a dual personality.
"The burglar stood awhile, muttering idiotically, and then shuffled offto the pantry. I followed him out into the dark hall and, taking mystand behind a curtain, awaited his return. He came back presently, and,by the glimmer of light from the open door, I could see that he had theteapot and the 'hontry.' Now some previous tenant had fitted thedining-room door with two external bolts; I cannot imagine why; but thepresent circumstances suggested a use for them. As soon as the burglarwas inside, I crept forward and quietly shut the door, shooting the topbolt.
"That roused my friend. He rushed at the door and shook it like amadman; he cursed with incredible fluency and addressed me in termswhich it would be inadequate to describe as rude. Then I silently shotthe bottom bolt and noisily drew back the top one. He thought I hadunbolted the door, and when he found that I had not, his languagebecame indescribable.
"There was a second door to the dining-room also opening into the hallat the farther end. My captive seemed suddenly to remember this, for hemade a rush for it. But so did I; and, the hall being unobstructed byfurniture, I got there first and shot the top bolt. He wrenchedfrantically at the handle and addressed me with strange and unseemlyepithets. I repeated the manoeuvre of pretending to unbolt the door, andsmiled as I heard him literally dancing with frenzy inside. It seemedhighly amusing at the time, though now, viewed retrospectively, it looksmerely silly.
"Quite suddenly his efforts ceased and I heard him shuffle away. Ireturned to the other door, but he made no fresh attempt on it. Ilistened, and hearing no sound, bethought me of the open door of themuseum. Probably he had gone there to look for a way out. This wouldnever do. The plate I cared not a fig for, but the museum specimens werea different matter; and he might damage them from sheer malice.
"I unbolted the door, entered and shut it again, locking it on theinside and dropping the key into my pocket. I had just done so when heappeared at the museum door, eyeing me warily and unobtrusively slippinga knuckle-duster on his left hand. I had noted that he was notleft-handed and drew my own conclusions as to what he meant to do withhis right. We stood for some seconds facing each other and then he beganto edge towards the door. I drew aside to let him pass and he ran to thedoor and turned the handle. When he found the door locked he wasfurious. He advanced threateningly with his left hand clenched, but thendrew back. Apparently, my smiling exterior, coupled with my previousconduct, daunted him. I think he took me for a lunatic; in fact, hehinted as much in coarse, ill-chosen terms. But his vocabulary was verylimited, though quaint.
"We exchanged a few remarks and I could see that he did not like thetone of mine. The fact is that the sight of the knuckle-duster hadchanged my mood. I no longer felt playful. He had recalled me to myoriginal purpose. He expressed a wish to leave the house and to know'what my game was.' I replied that he was my game and that I believedthat I had bagged him, whereupon he rushed at me and aimed a viciousblow at my head with his armed left fist, which, if it had come home,would have stretched me senseless. But it did not. I guarded it easilyand countered him so that he staggered back gasping.
"That made him furious. He came at me like a wild beast, with his mouthopen and his armed fist flourished aloft as if he would annihilate me. Itried to deal with him by the methods of Mr. Slimy Cohen, but it wasuseless. He was no boxer and he had a knuckle-duster. Consequently wegrabbed one another like a pair of monkeys and sought to inflictunorthodox injuries. He struggled and writhed and growled and kicked andeven tried to bite; while I kept, as far as I could, control of hiswrists and waited my opportunity. It was a most undignified affair. Westaggered to and fro, clawing at one another; we gyrated round the roomin a wild, unseemly waltz; we knocked over the chairs, we bumpedagainst the table, we banged each other's heads against the walls; andall the time, as my adversary growled and showed his teeth like a savagedog, I was sensible of a strange feeling of physical enjoyment such asone might experience in some strenuous game. I seemed to have acquired anew and unfamiliar personality.
"But the knuckle-duster was a complication; for it was his right handthat I had to watch; and yet I could not afford to free for an instanthis left, armed as it was with that shabbiest of weapons. Hence I hungon to his wrists while he struggled to wrench them free, and we pulledone another backwards and forwards and round and round in the mostabsurd and amateurish manner, each trying to trip the other up andfailing at every attempt. At last, in the course of our gyrations, webumped through the open door into the passage leading to the museum; andhere we came down together with a crash that shook the house.
"As ill luck would have it, I was underneath; but, in spite of the shockof the fall, I still managed to keep hold of his wrists, though I hadsome trouble to prevent him from biting my hands and face. So ourposition was substantially unchanged, and we were still wrigglingchaotically when a hasty step was heard descending the stairs. Theburglar paused for an instant to listen and then, with a sudden effort,wrenched away his right hand, which flew to his hip-pocket and came outgrasping a small revolver. Instantly I struck up with my left and caughthim a smart blow under the chin, which dislodged him; and as he rolledover there was a flash and a report, accompanied by the shattering ofglass and followed immediately by the slamming of the street door. I letgo his left hand, and, rising to my knees, grabbed the revolver with myown left, while, with my right, I whisked out the concussor and aimed avigorous blow at the top of his head. The padded weight came downwithout a sound--excepting the click of his teeth--and the effect wasinstantaneous. I rose, breathing quickly and eminently satisfie
d withthe efficiency of my implement until I noticed that the unconscious manwas bleeding slightly from the ear; which told me that I had struck toohard and fractured the base of the skull.
"However, my immediate purpose was to ascertain whether this was or wasnot the man whom I wanted. In the passage it was too dark to see eitherhis finger-tips or the minute texture of his hair; but my candle-lamp,with its parabolic reflector, would give ample light. I ran through intothe museum, where it was still burning, and, catching it up, ran backwith it; but I had barely reached the prostrate figure when I heardsomeone noisily opening the street door with a latch-key. The charwomanhad returned, no doubt, with the police.
"I am rather obscure as to what I meant to do. I think I had nodefinitely-formed intentions but acted more or less automatically,impelled by the desire to identify the burglar. What I did was to closethe museum door very quietly, with the aid of the key, unlock thedining-room door and open it.
"A police sergeant, a constable and a plain-clothes officer entered andthe charwoman lurked in the dark background.
"'Have they got away?' the sergeant demanded.
"'There was only one,' I said.
"At this the officers bustled away and I heard them descending to thebasement. The charwoman came in and looked gloatingly at my batteredcountenance, which bore memorials of every projecting corner of theroom.
"'It's a pity you come down, sir,' said she. 'You might have beenmurdered same as what your poor lady was. It's better to let them sortof people alone. That's what I say. Let 'em alone and they'll go home,as the sayin' is.'
"There was considerable truth in these observations, especially thelast. I acknowledged it vaguely, while the woman cast fascinated glancesround the disordered room. Then two of the officers returned and took upthe enquiry to an accompaniment of distant police whistles from the backof the house.
"'I needn't ask if you saw the man,' said the plain-clothes officer,with a faint grin.
"'No, you're right,' said the sergeant. 'He set upon you properly, sir.Seems to have been a lively party.' He glanced round the room and added:'Fired a pistol, too, your housekeeper tells me.'
"I nodded at the shattered mirror but made no comment, and the officer,remarking that I 'seemed a bit shaken up,' proceeded with hisinvestigations. I watched the two men listlessly. I was not muchinterested in them. I was thinking of the man on the other side of themuseum door and wondering if he had ringed hair.
"Presently the plain-clothes officer made a discovery. 'Hallo,' said he,'here's a carpet bag.' He drew it out from under the table and hoistedit up under the gaslight to examine it; and then he burst into a loudand cheerful laugh.
"'What's up?' said the sergeant.
"'Why, it's Jimmy Archer's bag.'
"'No!'
"'Fact. He showed it to me himself. It was given to him by the'Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society' to carry his tools in. Ha! Ha! OLord!'
"The sergeant examined the bag with an appreciative grin, whichbroadened as his colleague lifted out a brace, a pad of bits, a foldingjimmy and a few other trifles. I made a mental note of the burglar'sname, and then my interest languished again. The two officers lookedover the room together, tried the museum door and noted that it had notbeen tampered with; turned over the plate and admonished me on the follyof leaving it so accessible; and finally departed with the promise tobring a detective-inspector in the morning, and meanwhile to leave aconstable to guard the house.
"I would gladly have dispensed with that constable, especially as hesettled himself in the dining-room and seemed disposed to converse,which I was not. His presence shut me off from the museum. I could notopen the door, for the burglar was lying just inside. It was extremelyannoying. I wanted to make sure that the man was really dead, and,especially, I wanted to examine his hair and to compare hisfinger-prints with the set that I had in the museum. However, it couldnot be helped. Eventually I took my candle-lamp from the sideboard andwent up to bed, leaving the constable seated in the easy-chair with abox of cigars, a decanter of whiskey and a siphon of Apollinaris at hiselbow.
"I remained awake a long time cogitating on the situation. Was the manwhom I had captured the right man? Had I accomplished my task, and was Inow at liberty to 'determine,' as the lawyers say, the lease of myruined life? That was a question which the morning light would answer;and meanwhile one thing was clear: I had fairly committed myself to thedisposal of the dead burglar. I could not produce the body now; I shouldhave to get rid of it as best I could.
"Of course, the problem presented no difficulty. There was a fire-clayfurnace in the laboratory in which I had been accustomed to consume thebulky refuse of my preparations. A hundredweight or so of anthracitewould turn the body into undistinguishable ash; and yet--well, it seemeda wasteful thing to do. I have always been rather opposed to cremation,to the wanton destruction of valuable anatomical material. And now I wasactually proposing, myself, to practice that which I had so stronglydeprecated. I reflected. Here was a specimen delivered at my very door,nay, into the very precincts of my laboratory. Why should I destroy it?Could I not turn it to some useful account in the advancement ofscience?
"I turned this question over at length. Here was a specimen. But aspecimen of what? I am no mere curio-monger, no collector of frivolousand unmeaning trifles. A specimen must illustrate some truth. Now whattruth did this specimen illustrate? The question, thus stated, broughtforth its own answer in a flash.
"Criminal anthropology is practically an unillustrated science. A fewpaltry photographs, a few mouldering skulls of forgotten delinquents(such as that of Charlotte Corday), form the entire material on whichcriminal anthropologists base their unsatisfactory generalizations. Buthere was a really authentic specimen with a traceable life-history. Itought not to be lost to science. And it should not be.
"Presently my thoughts took a new turn. I had been deeply interested inthe account that I had read of the ingenious method by which theMundurucus used to preserve the heads of their slain enemies. The bookwas unfortunately still in the museum, but I had read the accountthrough, and now recalled it. The Mundurucu warrior, when he had killedan enemy, cut off his head with a broad bamboo knife and proceeded topreserve it thus: First he soaked it for a time in some non-oxidizablevegetable oil; then he extracted the bone and the bulk of the musclessomewhat as a bird-stuffer extracts the body from the skin. He thenfilled up the cavity with hot pebbles and hung the preparation up todry.
"By repeating the latter process many times, a gradual and symmetricalshrinkage was produced until the head had dwindled to the size of aman's fist or even smaller, leaving the features, however, practicallyunaltered. Finally he decorated the little head with bright-coloredfeathers--the Mundurucus were very clever at feather work--and fastenedthe lips together with a string, by which the head was suspended fromthe eaves of his hut or from the beams of the council house.
"It was highly ingenious. The question was whether heads so preservedwould be of any use for the study of facial characters. I had intendedto get a dead monkey from Jamrach's and experiment in the process. Butnow it seemed that the monkey would be unnecessary if only thepreparation could be produced without injuring the skull; and I had nodoubt that, with due care and skill, it could.
"At daybreak I went down to the dining-room. The policeman was dozing inhis chair; there was a good deal of cigar-ash about, and thewhiskey-decanter was less full than it had been, though not unreasonablyso. I roused up the officer and dismissed him with a final cigar andwhat he called an 'eye-opener'--about two fluid-ounces. When he had goneI let myself into the museum lobby. The burglar was quite dead andbeginning to stiffen. That was satisfactory; but was he the right man? Isnipped off a little tuft of hair and carried it to the laboratory wherethe microscope stood on the bench under its bell-glass. I laid one ortwo hairs on a slide with a drop of glycerine and placed the slide onthe stage of the microscope. Now was the critical moment. I applied myeye to the instrument and brought the objective into focus.
> "Alas! The hairs were uniformly colored with brown pigment! He was thewrong man.
"It was very disappointing. I really need not have killed him, thoughunder the circumstances there was nothing to regret on that score. Hewould not have died in vain. Alive he was merely a nuisance and a dangerto the community, whereas in the form of museum preparations he might beof considerable public utility.
"Under the main bench in the laboratory was a long cupboard containing alarge zinc-lined box or tank in which I had been accustomed to keep thespecimens which were in process of preparation. I brought the burglarinto the laboratory and deposited him in the tank, shutting theair-tight lid and securing it with a padlock. For further security Ilocked the cupboard, and, when I had washed the floor of the lobby anddried it with methylated spirit, all traces of the previous night'sactivities were obliterated. If the police wanted to look over themuseum and laboratory, they were now quite at liberty to do so.
"I have mentioned that, during the actual capture of this burglar, Iseemed to develop an entirely alien personality. But the change was onlytemporary, and I had now fully recovered my normal temperament, which isthat of a careful, methodical and eminently cautious man. Hence, as Itook my breakfast and planned out my procedure, an important fact madeitself evident. I should presently have in my museum a human skeletonwhich I should have acquired in a manner not recognized by socialconventions or even by law. Now, if I could place myself in a positionto account for that skeleton in a simple and ordinary way, it might, inthe future, save inconvenient explanations.
"I decided to take the necessary measures without delay, andaccordingly, after a rather tedious interview with thedetective-inspector (whom I showed over the entire house, including themuseum and laboratory), I took a cab to Great St. Andrew Street, SevenDials, where resided a well-known dealer in osteology. I did not, ofcourse, inform him that I had come to buy an understudy for a deceasedburglar. I merely asked for an articulated skeleton, to stand and not tohang (hanging involves an unsightly suspension ring attached to theskull). I looked over his stock with a steel measuring-tape in my hand,for a skeleton of about the right size--sixty-three inches--but I didnot mention that size was a special object. I told him that I wished forone that would illustrate racial characters, at which he smiled--as wellhe might, knowing that his skeletons were mostly built up of assortedbones of unknown origin.
"I selected a suitable skeleton, paid for it, (five pounds) and tookcare to have a properly drawn invoice, describing the goods and dulydated and receipted. I did not take my purchase away with me; but itarrived the same day, in a funeral box, which the detective-inspector,who happened to be in the house at the time, kindly assisted me tounpack.
"My next proceeding was to take a set of photographs of the deceased,including three views of the face, a separate photograph of each ear,and two aspects of the hands. I also took a complete set offinger-prints. Then I was ready to commence operations in earnest."
The rest of Challoner's narrative relating to Number One is of a highlytechnical character and not very well suited to the taste of layreaders. The final result will be understood by the following quotationfrom the museum catalogue:
"Specimens Illustrating Criminal Anthropology.
"Series A. Osteology.
"1. Skeleton of burglar, aged 37. [symbol: male]. Height 63 inches.(James Archer.)
"This specimen was of English parentage, was a professional burglar, aconfirmed recidivist, and--since he habitually carried firearms--apotential homicide. His general intelligence appears to have been of alow order, his manual skill very imperfect (he was a gas-fitter by tradebut never regularly employed). He was nearly illiterate andoccasionally but not chronically alcoholic.
"Cranial capacity 1594 cc. Cephalic index 76.8.
"For finger-prints see Album D 1, p. 1. For facial characters see AlbumE 1, pp. 1, 2 and 3, and Series B (dry, reduced preparations). Number1."
* * * * *
I closed the two volumes--the Catalogue and the Archives--and meditatedon the amazing story that they told in their unemotional, matter-of-factstyle. Was poor Challoner mad? Had he an insane obsession on the subjectof crime and criminals? Or was he, perchance, abnormally sane, if I mayuse the expression? That his outlook was not as other men's was obvious.Was it a rational outlook or that of a lunatic?
I cannot answer the question. Perhaps a further study of his Archivesmay throw some fresh light on it.