“How did you find out?” he asked. “What made you suspect?”
“A photograph of your daughter, that you had overlooked,” the inspector answered. “You had provided yourself with a second identity very cleverly, Mr. Thompson. If it had not been for Mr. Bechcombe's murder you would probably have succeeded.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Thompson interrupted with sudden fire. “I swear I had not! Mr. Bechcombe was alive and well when I left the offices. I was never more shocked in my life. You might have knocked me down with a feather when I saw in the paper that he had been murdered, and that I was wanted on suspicion as having murdered him.”
“Umph!” The inspector looked at him. “You are a solicitor, or next door to one, Mr. Thompson, I believe. You ought not to need a bit of advice I am going to give you now. As I told you, you will be at liberty to see a solicitor as soon as we reach London. Send for the best you know and tell him the whole truth about this unhappy affair and tell nobody else anything at all.”
Thus advised, Thompson wisely became dumb. He sat back in his corner of the car in a hunched-up, crouching condition. He looked strangely unlike the jaunty, self-satisfied man who had stepped upon the gangway of the Atlantic so short a time before. To the inspector, watching him, he seemed almost visibly to shrink, and as the detective's keen eyes wandered over him he began to understand some of the apparently glaring discrepancies between the descriptions of Thompson circulated by the police and the appearance of the man before him. Thompson's teeth had been noticeably defective. Samuel Horsingforth, otherwise Hoyle, had had all the deficiencies made good and was, when he smiled, evidently in possession of a very good set of teeth, real or artificial. This, besides entirely altering his appearance, made his face fuller and quite unlike the hollow cheeks of Mr. Bechcombe's missing clerk. That Thompson had worn a thin, straggly beard, while this man was clean-shaven, went for nothing, but Thompson had been bald, with hair wearing off the forehead. Horsingforth's stubbly, grey hair grew thickly and rather low, and though the inspector now detected the wig he inwardly acknowledged it to be the best he had ever seen. Then, too, Thompson had been thin and spare, and though looking now at the man hunched up in the car one might see the padding on the shoulders, and under the protuberant waistcoat over which the gold watch chain was gracefully suspended, altogether it was not to be wondered at that Thompson had been so long at large. Inspector Furnival knew that his present capture would add largely to a reputation that was growing every day. At the same time he realized that he was still a long way from the achievement of the object to which all his energies had been directed—the capture of the Yellow Dog and the dispersal of the Yellow Gang.
Thompson took the inspector's advice for the rest of the drive and said no more. There were moments when the other two almost doubted whether he were not really incapable of speech.
They drove direct to Scotland Yard. From there, later in the day, Thompson would be taken to Bow Street to be formally charged, and from thence to his temporary home at Pentonville.
After the remand Steadman and the inspector walked away together.
“So that's that. A clever piece of work, inspector,” the barrister remarked.
The inspector blew his nose.