[CHAPTER XIII]
Jacob Burrell sat in his comfortable armchair and took counsel with himself. He was a bachelor, and like many other bachelors was wedded to a hobby, which in some respects was more to him than any wife could possibly have been. In other words he was an enthusiastic philatelist, and his collection of the world’s stamps was the envy of every enthusiast who came in contact with them. For Jacob Burrell they possessed another interest that was quite apart from their mere intrinsic value. A very large number of the stamps so carefully pasted in the book had been collected, or had come into his possession, in the performance of his professional duties. A very rare 1¼ schilling blue Hamburg was picked up by the merest chance on the same day that he ran a notorious bank swindler to earth in Berlin; while a certain blue and brown United States, worth upward of thirty pounds, became his property during a memorable trip to America in search of a fraudulent trustee, whose whereabouts the officials of Scotland Yard had not been able to discover. Well-nigh every page had a story of its own to tell, and when Burrell was in the humour, he could, with the book before him, reel off tale after tale, of a description that would be calculated to make the listener’s hair stand on end with astonishment. At the present moment he was occupied, as he very well knew, with one of the most knotty problems he had ever tackled in his life. His face wore a puzzled expression. In his right hand he held a large magnifying glass and in his left a Canadian stamp of the year 1852. But whether it was the case he was thinking of or the stamp it would have been difficult to say.
“Genuine or not?” he asked himself. “That’s the question. If it’s the first, it’s worth five pounds of any man’s money. If it’s a fudge, then it’s not the first time I’ve been had, but I’ll take very good care that, so far as the gentleman is concerned who sold it to me, it shall be the last.”
He scrutinized it carefully once more through the glass and then shook his head. Having done so he replaced the doubtful article in the envelope whence he had taken it, slipped the glass back into its chamois-leather case, tied the tape round the handle as deliberately as if all his success in life depended on it, put both book and glass away in a drawer, and then proceeding to the sideboard on the other side of the room, slowly and carefully mixed himself a glass of grog. It was close upon midnight and he felt that the work he had that day completed entitled him to such refreshment.
“Good Heavens,” he muttered as he sipped it, “what fools some men can be!”
What this remark had to do with the stamp in question was not apparent, but his next soliloquy made his meaning somewhat more intelligible.
“If he had wanted to find himself in the dock and to put the rope round his neck he couldn’t have gone to work better. He must needs stand talking to the girl in the Strand until she cries, whereupon he calls a cab and drives home with her, gets out of it and takes up a position in the full light of a gas lamp, so that the first policeman who passes may have a look at his face, and recognise him again when the proper time comes. After that he hurries back to his hotel at such a pace that he arrives in a sufficiently agitated condition to stand in need of brandy. Why, it’s an almost unbelievable list of absurd coincidences. However, he didn’t commit the crime, that’s quite certain. I’ve had a bit of experience in my time, and I don’t know that I’ve ever made a mistake about a human face yet. There’s not a trace of guilt in his. To-morrow morning I’ll just run round to the scene of the murder and begin my investigations there. Though the Pro’s have been over the ground before me, it will be strange if I can not pick up something that has not been noticed by their observant eyes.”
A perpetual feud existed between the famous Jacob Burrell and the genuine representatives of the profession. His ways were unorthodox, the latter declared. He did not follow the accustomed routine, and what was worse, when he managed to obtain information it was almost, if not quite, impossible to get him to divulge it for their benefit. Such a man deserved to be set down on every possible opportunity.