In taking up a case of this kind, one must ever feel in the initial stage that he is groping in the dark; but the trained mind at once begins to reason the matter out, and the very first thing sought for is a feasible and probable motive. Motive is the very keynote in all detective work, and when the motive has been more or less accurately guessed, the next stage is to try and determine who was likely to have been actuated by that motive. These remarks necessarily apply to complicated cases, where the mystery surrounding them seems impenetrable. When a man is found murdered in his house, and his valuables have been carried off, the motive is apparent enough. That is a crime of mere vulgar sordidness, and the motive is writ large. All crime is, of course, more or less vulgar, but sordidness is not always the actuating influence. Whether sordidness was or was not at the bottom of this Riga crime, it was difficult at that stage to say; but the inquirer was confronted with the remarkable fact that nothing seemed to have been stolen.
In spite of the many rumours of this, that, and the other, and the various opinions expressed, all of which were counter to his own views, Danevitch remained uninfluenced by them, and adhered to the opinion he had formed, which, as I have endeavoured to show, was based on sound reasoning. The many documents scattered about the office where the murder took place, although carefully examined by Danevitch, did not help the inquiry, as they were all business papers, and obviously had been discarded by the murderer as of no value to him. They had been dragged rudely out of the large safe, and scattered broadcast on the ground. Now, that was either the act of a madman, or of someone who was searching hurriedly for something he knew or believed to exist, and which he expected to find in the safe.
Danevitch’s next step was to examine the contents of a large waste-paper basket that stood in the office. The basket was full of paper, torn and otherwise. He records that this proceeding of his was regarded as an absolutely useless one; but those who condemned it did not know what he was looking for. I have already said that, in weighing all the particulars he had gathered up so far, he formed an opinion that Mr. Ferguson had returned to his office to meet somebody by appointment. The reasons for this opinion have been set forth. One of his strong points was, having formed an opinion, which he never did until after much reflection, and a very careful examination of all details, so far as he could gather them up, he would not swerve from that opinion until he had proved it wrong; and as soon as ever he was convinced that he was in error, he was always ready to admit it.
It is strong testimony to the wonderful perseverance and patience of the man that every scrap of paper in the basket was carefully examined. Amongst the great mass he found some fragments which attracted his attention. One scrap bore the following words: ‘Door at five.’ It was a coarse, common enough paper, of Russian make, and the formation of the letters indicated that the writer was an uneducated person. With infinite trouble and pains he searched for the corresponding morsels of paper. And if anyone wants to know what a difficult task it was, let him fill a basket with fragments and shreds of paper, shake them well up, and then endeavour to pick out certain pieces and fit them together. No Chinese puzzle, complicated and ingenious as most of them are, was ever harder to do. But human ingenuity, coupled with exemplary patience, will accomplish much, and Danevitch at last succeeded in getting all the scraps together. Then he pasted them in their proper order on a sheet of foolscap, and was thus enabled to read the following:
‘This is the last chance I shall give you. You must see me. I will be opposite your warehouse door at five on Saturday. We can then discuss the matter alone and undisturbed. You need not try to shuffle me off. If you fail to do justice to those you have wronged, I will make the whole affair public. So stay away at your peril.’
The importance of this discovery could not be overrated; and it not only gave Danevitch a clue, but proved him right in his surmises. The letter was clearly a laboured one. It was a man’s handwriting, and the writer showed that he was not a practised correspondent. There were smudges and smears, and words wrongly spelt, although in the translation given above it has been deemed advisable to give the correct spelling, because in rendering it from the original into English, if the inaccuracies were retained, all sense would be lost to the reader.
It was very evident now to Danevitch that Ferguson had had a secret—the secret of some dark transaction, which placed him so far in the power of an uneducated person that he had obeyed the command to go to the office, after all was closed up for the day, in order to hold an interview with the writer, who neither dated his missive nor signed his name.
Of course Danevitch kept this discovery to himself; and he set to work with all the caution and skill for which he was famed to get some accurate and reliable information of Ferguson’s disposition and his peculiarities of temperament. Everyone spoke highly of him—indeed, there seemed a general desire to belaud him, even beyond his merits, perhaps. In common phraseology, his word was considered as good as his bond. His acts were above suspicion; he was eminently respectable; he was charitable, though there was a feeling that there was a tendency to ostentation in his giving. In other words, he could hardly be ranked amongst that class of men who will not let their right hand know what their left hand gives. His marked peculiarities were an obstinately strong will, and his refusal to budge from a position he had once taken up. In this Danevitch saw a probable cause of the crime, when it was taken in consideration with the letter. The writer had not premeditated the crime, but had been exasperated into madness by Ferguson’s obstinacy. This was the detective’s first deduction, and as he advanced step by step it seemed to receive remarkable confirmation. Finally, as an estimate of Ferguson’s character, he was regarded as a faithful and honourable husband, an affectionate father, a loyal friend. Amongst his workpeople he was looked up to with respect, if not with actual affection. He was, however, thought an exacting master, requiring the full measure of labour he bargained for; but that rendered, he could be considerate enough, and, in fact, did much for the physical and moral welfare of those who served him.
Danevitch had now reached a stage in his investigation when he could congratulate himself on having obtained a clue. It is true it was a slender one, but to such a man it was of great value. He found himself handicapped, however, by the very obvious disadvantage he would be placed in if he had ventured to suggest that there was a flaw in Ferguson’s character—that he had done something or other which had placed him in the power of a person who was far below him in the social scale. Whatever the error was he had committed, it was clearly serious enough to draw him back to his warehouse after business hours, in order to have a clandestine interview with that person. As showing Danevitch’s difficulty, it is worth while recording a conversation he had with Mr. Tauchnitz, who, as his name implies, was a German—a very shrewd, long-headed fellow, who held his partner in the highest estimation. Tauchnitz had been associated with Ferguson in business for a great many years, and he claimed to know and understand him better than anyone else outside his own family.
‘Do you think, Mr. Tauchnitz,’ Danevitch asked—‘do you think that your late lamented partner had by some rash act compromised himself to such an extent with an inferior as to be completely in the power of that inferior?’