“Well, Doctor,” said Miller, “if you can spare the time to have a look at it through the microscope, I wish you would, and let us know if you discover anything worth noting. And perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking a glance at the hair, too, to settle the colour more exactly.”
He transferred the latter, which he had carefully folded in paper and put in his pocketbook, to Thorndyke, who deposited it, with the scrap of paper, in his letter-case, after pencilling on the wrapper a note of the nature and source of the object.
“And that,” said the Superintendent, “seems to be the lot. We haven’t done so badly, after all. If you are right—as I expect you are—we have got quite a serviceable description of the man Bromeswell. But it is a most mysterious affair. I can’t imagine what the deuce can have happened. It is pretty clear that he came here about the tenth of June and probably made a batch of paper which we shall hear of later. But what can have happened to the man? Something out of the common, evidently. He would never have stayed away voluntarily with the certainty that the premises would be entered, his precious moulds found and the whole thing blown upon. If he had intended to clear out he would certainly have taken the moulds with him, or at least destroyed them if he thought that the game was up. What do you think, Doctor?”
“It seems to me,” replied Thorndyke, “that there are three possibilities. He may be dead, and if so he probably died suddenly, before he was able to make any arrangements; he may be in prison on some other charge; or he may have got a scare that we know nothing of and had to keep out of sight. You said that the Belgian police were taking some action.”
“Yes, they have got an officer over here, by agreement with us, who is making inquiries about the man who planted the notes in Belgium. But he isn’t after Bromeswell. He is looking for quite a different man, as I told you. But he doesn’t pretend that he could recognize him.”
“It doesn’t follow that Bromeswell knows that. If the confederate has discovered that inquiries are being made, he may have given his friend a hint, and the pair of them may have absconded. But that is mere speculation. As you say, something extraordinary must have happened, and it must have been something sudden and unforeseen. And that is all that we can say at present.”
By the time that this conclusion was reached, they had emerged from Clifford’s Inn Passage into Fleet Street; and here they parted, the Superintendent setting a course westward and Thorndyke crossing the road to the gateway of Middle Temple Lane.
Chapter VIII.
In Which Thorndyke Tries Over the Moves
It was in a deeply meditative frame of mind that Thorndyke pursued his way towards his chambers after parting with the Superintendent. For the inspection which he had just made had developed points of interest other than those which he had discussed with the detective officer.
To his acute mind, habituated to rapid inference, the case of the mysterious Mr. Bromeswell had inevitably presented a parallelism with that of Daniel Purcell. Bromeswell had disappeared without leaving a trace. If he had absconded, he had done so without premeditation or preparation, apparently under the compulsion of some unforeseen but imperative necessity. But that was precisely Purcell’s case, and the instant the mere comparison was made, other points of agreement began to appear and multiply in the most startling manner.