As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

“What peculiarities do you mean?”

“Well,” he replied, “there is the nature and purpose of the thing. It is an appliance for killing a human being. That purpose implies either a very strong motive or a very light estimate of the value of human life. Then, as we have said, the sender is fairly ingenious but yet quite unmechanical and apparently unprovided with the common tools which ordinary men possess and are more or less able to use. You notice that the combination of ingenuity with non-possession of tools is a rather unusual one.”

“How do you infer that the sender possessed no tools?”

“From the fact that none were used, and that such materials were employed as required no tools, though these were not the most suitable materials. For instance, common twine was used to pull the trigger, though it is a bad material by reason of its tendency to stretch. But it can be cut with a knife or a pair of scissors, whereas wire, which was the really suitable material, requires cutting pliers to divide it. Again, there were the corks. They were really not very safe, for their weakness and their resiliency might have led to disaster in the event of a specially heavy jerk in transit. A man who possessed no more than a common keyhole saw, or a hand-saw and a chisel or two, would have roughly shaped up one or two blocks of wood to fit the pistol and jar, which would have made the thing perfectly secure. If he had possessed a glue-pot, he would not have used seccotine. But every one has waste corks, and they can be trimmed to shape with an ordinary dinner-knife; and seccotine can be bought at any stationer’s. But, to return to what we were saying. I had no special precautions in my mind. I suggested that we should keep our own counsel merely on the general principle that it is always best to keep one’s own counsel. One may make a confidence to an entirely suitable person; but who can say that that person may not, in his or her turn, make a confidence? If we keep our knowledge strictly to ourselves we know exactly how we stand, and that if there has been any leakage, it had been from some other source. But I need not platitudinize to an experienced and learned counsel.”

I grinned appreciatively at the neat finish; for “experienced counsel” as I certainly was not, I was at least able to realize, with secret approval, how adroitly Thorndyke had eluded my leading question. And at that I left it, enquiring in my turn:

“I suppose nothing of interest has transpired since I have been away?”

“Very little. There is one item of news, but that can hardly be said to have ‘transpired’ unless you can associate the process of transpiration with a suction-pump. Superintendent Miller took my advice and applied the suctorial method to Wallingford with results of which he possibly exaggerates the importance. He tells me—this is, of course, in the strictest confidence—that under pressure, Wallingford made a clean breast of the cocaine and morphine business. He admitted that he had obtained those drugs fraudulently by forging an order in Dimsdale’s name, written on Dimsdale’s headed note-paper, to the wholesale druggists to deliver to bearer the drugs mentioned. He had possessed himself of the note-paper at the time when he was working at the account books in Dimsdale’s surgery.”

“But how was it that Dimsdale did not notice what had happened when the accounts were sent in?”

“No accounts were ever sent in. The druggists whom Wallingford patronized were not those with whom Dimsdale had an account. The order stated, in every case, that bearer would pay cash.”

“Quite an ingenious little plan of Wallingford’s,” I remarked. “It is more than I should have given him credit for. And you say that Miller attaches undue importance to this discovery. I am not surprised at that. But why do you think he exaggerates its importance?”