“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I will take them in their order. This is the case of a man who was seen to start on a voyage for a given destination in company with one other man. His start out to sea was witnessed by a number of persons. From that moment he was never seen again by any person excepting his one companion. He is said to have reached his destination, but his arrival there rests upon the unsupported verbal testimony of one person, the said companion. Thereafter he vanished utterly, and since then has made no sign of being alive; he has drawn no cheques, though he has a considerable balance at his bank, he has communicated with no one and he has never been seen by anybody who could recognize him.”
“Is that quite correct?” interposed Phillip. “He is said to have been seen at Falmouth and Ipswich, and then there are those letters.”
“His alleged appearance, embarking at Falmouth and disembarking at Ipswich,” replied Thorndyke, “rest, like his arrival at Penzance, upon the unsupported testimony of one person, his sole companion on the voyage. That statement I can prove to be untrue. He was never seen either at Falmouth or at Ipswich. As to the letters, I can prove them both to be forgeries and for the present I ask you to admit them as such, pending the production of proof. But if we exclude the alleged appearances and the letters, what I have said is correct; from the time when this man put out to sea from Sennen, he has never been seen by any one but Varney and there has never been any corroboration of Varney’s statement that he landed at Penzance.
“Some eight months later a portion of this man’s clothing is found. It bears evidence of having been lying at the bottom of the sea for many months, so that it must have sunk to its resting-place within a very short time of the man’s disappearance. The place where it has been lying is one over, or near, which the man must have sailed in the yacht. It has been moored to the bottom by some very heavy object; and a very heavy object has disappeared from the yacht. That heavy object had apparently not disappeared when the yacht started, and it is not known to have been on the yacht afterwards. The evidence goes to show that the disappearance of that object coincided in time with the disappearance of the man; and a quantity of cordage disappeared, certainly, on that day.
“Those are the facts at present in our possession with regard to the disappearance of Daniel Purcell; to which we may add that the disappearance was totally unexpected, that it has never been explained or accounted for excepting in a letter which is a manifest forgery, and that even in the latter, apart from the fictitious nature of the letter, the explanation is utterly inconsistent with all that is known of the missing man in respect of his character, his habits, his intentions and his circumstances.”
Chapter XVI.
In Which John Rodney Is Convinced
Once more, as Thorndyke concluded, there was a long, uncomfortable silence, during which the two brothers cogitated profoundly and with a very disturbed expression. At length Rodney spoke.
“There is no denying, Thorndyke, that the body of circumstantial evidence that you have produced, and expounded so skilfully and lucidly, is extraordinarily complete. Of course it is subject to your being able to prove that Varney’s reports as to Purcell’s appearance at Falmouth and Ipswich were false reports and that the letters which purported to be written and sent by Purcell were in fact not written or sent by him. If you can prove those assertions there will undoubtedly be a very formidable case against Varney, because those reports and those letters would then be evidence that some one was endeavouring to prove—falsely—that Purcell is alive. But this would amount to presumptive evidence that he is not alive and that some one has reasons for concealing the fact of his death. But we must look to you to prove what you have asserted. You could hardly suggest that we should charge a highly respectable gentleman of our acquaintance with having murdered his friend and made away with the body—for that is obviously your meaning—on a mass of circumstantial evidence which is, you must admit, rather highly theoretical.”
“I agree with you completely,” replied Thorndyke. “The evidence respecting the reports and the letters is obviously essential. But in the meantime it is of the first importance that we carry this investigation to an absolute finish. It is not merely a question of justice or our duty on grounds of public policy to uncover a crime and secure the punishment of the criminal. There are individual rights and interests to be guarded; those, I mean, of the missing man’s wife. If her husband is dead, common justice to her demands that his death should be proved and placed on public record.”
“Yes, indeed!” Rodney agreed, heartily. “If Purcell is dead, then she is a widow and the petition becomes unnecessary. By the way, I understand now why you were always so set against the private detective; but what I don’t understand is why you put in that advertisement.”