 The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill. There was matter and despair for the papers the next day. The striking ceremony, Mr Gladstone's speech, the sensational arrest—these would of themselves had made excellent themes for reports and leaders, but the personality of the man arrested and the Big Bow Mystery battle, as it came to be called, gave additional pecancy to the paragraphs and the posters. The behaviour of Mort Lake put the last touch to the picturesqueness of the position. He left the hall when the lights went out, and walked unnoticed and unmolested through pliads of policemen to the nearest police station, where the superintendent was almost too excited to take any notice of his demand to be arrested. But to do him justice, the official yielded as soon as he understood the situation. It seems inconceivable that he did not violate some red tape regulation in so doing. To some, this self-surrender was limpid proof of innocence. To others it was the damning token of despairing guilt. The morning papers were a pleasant reading for Grodman, who chuckled as continuously over his morning-egg as if he had laid it. Jane was alarmed for the sanity of her satinine master. As her husband would have said, Grodman's grins were not beautiful. But he made no effort to suppress them. Not only had Wimp perpetrated a grotesque blunder, but the journalists to a man were down on his great sensation-tablo, though their denunciations did not appear in the dramatic columns. The liberal papers said that he had endangered Mr. Gladstone's life, the conservative that he'd unloose the raging elements of bow-blaggardism and set in motion forces which might have easily swelled to a riot involving severe destruction of property. But Tom Mortlake was, after all, the thought swamping every other. It was, in a sense, a triumph for the man. But Wimps' turn came when Mortlake, who reserved his defense, was brought up before a magistrate and by force of the new evidence fully committed for trial on the charge of murdering Arthur Constant. Grodman Men's thought centred again on the mystery, and the solution of the inexplicable problem agitated mankind from China to Peru. In the middle of February the great trial befell. It was another of the opportunities which the Chancellor of the Exchequer neglects. So stirring a drama might easily have cleared its expenses, despite the length of the cast, the salaries of the stars and the rent of the house, in a mere advance booking, for it was a drama which, by the rites of Magna Charta, could never be repeated—a drama which ladies of fashion would have given their earrings to witness, even with the central figure not a woman. And there was a woman in it anyhow to judge by the little that had transpired at the Magisterial Examination and the fact that the country was placarded with bills offering a reward for information concerning a Miss Jessie Diamond. Mortlake was defended by Sir Charles Brown Harland, a QC, retained at the expense of the Mortlake Defence Fund, subscriptions to which came also from Australia and the Continent, and set on his metal by the fact that he was the accepted Labour candidate for an East End constituency. The Majesties, Victoria and the Law, were represented by Mr. Robert Spigot QC. Mr. Spigot QC, in presenting his case, said, I propose to show that the prisoner murdered his friend and fellow lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation. Premeditation so studied as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable mystery for weeks to all the world, though fortunately without altogether baffling the almost superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward Wimp of the Scotland Yard Detective Department. I propose to show that the motives of the prisoner were jealousy and revenge. Jealousy not only of his friend's superior influence over the working men he himself aspired to lead, but the more commonplace animosity engendered by the disturbing element of a woman having relations to both. If, before my case is complete, it will be my painful duty to show that the murdered man was not the saint the world has agreed to paint him, I shall not shrink from unveiling the truer picture in the interests of justice, which cannot say, nil nici bonum, even of the dead. I propose to show that the murder was committed by the prisoner, shortly before half-past six on the morning of December 4th, and that the prisoner having, with the remarkable ingenuity which he has shown throughout, attempted to prepare an alibi by feigning to leave London by the first train to Liverpool, returned home, got in with his latch key through the street door which he had left on the latch, unlocked his victim's bedroom with the key which he possessed, cut the sleeping man's throat, pocketed his razor, locked the door again and gave it the appearance of being bolted, went downstairs, unslipped the bolt of the big lock, closed the door behind him, and got to Euston in time for the second train to Liverpool. The fog helped his proceedings throughout. Such was, in some, the theory of the prosecution. The pale defiant figure in the dark winced perceptibly under parts of it. Mrs. Drabb-Dump was the first witness called for the prosecution. She was quite used to legal inquisitiveness by this time, but did not appear in good spirits. On the night of December 3rd you gave the prisoner a letter. Yes, your lurchip. How did he behave when he read it? He turned very pale and excited. He went up to the poor gentleman's room and I'm afraid he quarreled with him. He might have left his last hours peaceful. Amusement. What happened then? The moat-lake went out in a passion and came in again in about an hour. He told you he was going away to Liverpool very early the next morning? No, your lurchip. He said he was going to Devonport. Sensation. What time did you get up the next morning? Half past six. That is not your usual time. No, I always get up at six. How do you account for the extra sleepiness? Miss Fortune's will happen. It wasn't the dull and foggy weather. No, my lord, else I should never get up early, laughed him. You drink something before going to bed? I like my cup of tea, I take it strong without sugar. It always steadies my nerves. Quite so. How were you when the prisoner told you he was going to Devonport? Drinking my tea in the kitchen. What should you say if prisoner dropped something in it to make you sleep? Witness startled. He ought to be shot. He might have done it without your noticing it, I suppose. If he was clever enough to murder the poor gentleman, he was clever enough to try and poison me. The judge. The witness in her applies must confine herself to the evidence. Mr. Spigot QC. I must submit to your lordship that it is a very logical answer and exactly illustrates the interdependence of the probabilities. Now Mrs. Drabb-Dump, let us know what happened when you awoke at half past six the next morning. Thereupon Mrs. Drabb-Dump recapitulated the evidence with new redundancies but slight variations given by her at the inquest. How she became alarmed. How she found the street door locked by the big lock. How she roused Grodman and got him to burst open the door. How they found the body. All this with which the public was already familiar ad nauseam was exhorted from her afresh. Look at this key! Key! Pastor Witness. Do you recognise it? Ah, yes. How did you get it? It's the key of my first floor front. I'm sure I left it sticking in the door. Do you know a Miss Diamond? Yes. Mr. Malt Lake, sweetheart, but I knew he would never marry her poor thing. Sensation. Why not? She was getting too grand for her. Amusement. You don't mean anything more than that? I don't know. She only came to my place once or twice. The last time I set eyes on her must have been in October. How did she appear? She was very miserable, but she wouldn't let you see it. Laughter. How has the prisoner behaved since the murder? She was same very glam and sorry for it. Cross-examined. Did not the prisoner once occupy the bedroom of Mr. Constant and give it up to him so that Mr. Constant might have the two rooms on the same floor? Yes, but he didn't pay as much. And while occupying this front bedroom, did not the prisoner once lose his key and have another maid? He did. He was very careless. Do you know what the prisoner and Mr. Constant spoke about on the night of December 3rd? No, I couldn't hear. Then how do you know they were quarrelling? They were talking so loud. Sir Charles Brown Harland QC sharply, but I am talking loudly to you now. Should you say I was quarrelling? It takes two to make a quarrel. Laughter. Was the prisoner the sort of man who, in your opinion, would commit a murder? No, I should never have guessed it was him. You always struck you as a thorough gentleman. Now, my lord, I knew he was only a comp. You say the prisoner had seemed depressed since the murder. Had that not been due to the disappearance of his sweet heart? No, he'd more likely begat to get rid of her. Then he wouldn't be jealous if Mr. Constant took her off his hands. Sensation. Men are dogging the manges. Never mind about men, Mrs. Drab-Dump, had the prisoner ceased to care for Miss Diamond. He didn't seem to think of her, my lad. When he got a letter in her hand right in among his heap, he used to throw it aside till he'd torn open the others. Harland Brown QC, with a triumphant ringing in his voice, Thank you, Mrs. Drab-Dump, you may sit down. Spigot QC, one moment, Mrs. Drab-Dump, you say the prisoner had ceased to care for Miss Diamond. Might not this have been in consequence of his suspecting for some time that she had relations with Mr. Constant? The judge. That is not a fair question. Spigot QC, that will do, thank you, Mrs. Drab-Dump. Brown Harland QC. No, one more question, Mrs. Drab-Dump. Did you ever see anything say when Miss Diamond came to your house, to make you suspect anything between Mr. Constant and the prisoner's sweetheart? She did meet him once when Mr. Malt Lake was out. Sensation. Where did she meet him? In the passage he was going out when she knocked and he opened the door. Amusement. You didn't hear what they said? I ain't an eavesdropper. They spoke friendly and went away together. Mr. George Grudman was called and repeated his evidence at the inquest. Cross-examined he testified to the warm friendship between Mr. Constant and the prisoner. He knew very little about Miss Diamond having scarcely seen her. Prisoner had never spoken to him much about her. He should not think she was much in prisoner's thoughts. Unfortunately the prisoner had been depressed by the death of his friend. Besides he was overworked. Witness thought highly of Malt Lake's character. It was incredible that Constant had had improper relations of any kind with his friend's promised wife. Grudman's evidence made a very favourable impression on the jury. The prisoner looked his gratitude and the prosecution felt sorry it had been necessary to call this witness. Dr. Howlett and Sergeant Runnymede had also to repeat their evidence. Dr. Robinson, police surgeon, likewise retended his evidence as to the nature of the wound and the approximate hour of death, but this time he was much more severely examined. He would not bind himself down to state the time within an hour or two. He thought life had been extinct two or three hours when he arrived so that the deed had been committed between seven and eight. Under gentle pressure from the Prosecution Council he admitted that it might possibly have been between six and seven. Cross-examined he reiterated his impression in favour of the later hour. Supplementary evidence from medical experts proved as dubious and uncertain as if the court had confined itself to the original witness. It seemed to be generally agreed that the data for determining the time of death of any body were too complex and variable to admit to a very precise inference. Rigor mortis and other symptoms setting in within very wide limits and differing largely in different persons. All agree that death from such a cut must have been practically instantaneous, and the theory of suicide was rejected by all. As a whole the medical evidence tended to fix the time of death with a high degree of probability between the hours of six and half-past eight. The efforts of the prosecution were bent upon throwing back the time of death to as early as possible after about half-past five. The defence spent all its strength upon pinning the experts to the conclusion that the death could not have been earlier than seven. Evidently the prosecution was going to fight hard for the hypothesis that Mortlake had committed the crime in the interval between the first and second trains for Liverpool, while the defence was concentrating itself on an alibi showing that the prisoner had travelled by the second train, which left Euston Station at a quarter-past seven, so that there could have been no possible time for the passage between Bow and Euston. It was an exciting struggle. As yet the contending forces seemed equally matched. The evidence had gone as much fore as against the prisoner. But everybody knew that worst lay behind. "'Call Edward Wimp!' The story Edward Wimp had to tell began tamely enough with thrashed-out facts. But at last the new facts came. In consequence of suspicions that had formed in your mind you took up your quarters disguised in the late Mr. Constance's room?' I did. At the commencement of the year. Most suspicions had gradually gathered against the occupants of No. 11 Glover Street, and I resolved to quash or confirm these suspicions once and for all. Will you tell the jury what happened? Whenever the prisoner was away for the night I searched his room. I found the key of Mr. Constance's bedroom buried deeply in the side of prisoner's leather sofa. I found what I imagined to be the letter he received on December 3rd in the pages of a bread-shore lying under the same sofa. There were two razors about. Mr. Spigot Q. C. said, "'The key has already been identified by Mrs. Drab-Dump. The letter I now propose to read.' It was undated and ran as follows. "'Dear Tom, this is to bid you farewell. It is best for all. I am going a long way, dearest. Do not seek to find me, for it will be useless. Think of me as one swallowed up by the waters, and be assured that it is only to spare you shame and humiliation in the future that I tear myself from you and all the sweetness of life. Darling, there is no other way. I fear you could never marry me now. I have felt it for months. Dear Tom, you will understand what I mean. We must look facts in the face. I hope you will always be friends with Mr. Constance. Goodbye, dear. God bless you. May you always be happy and find a worthier wife than I. Perhaps when you are great and rich and famous as you deserve, you will sometimes think not unkindly of one who, however faulty and unworthy of you, will at least love you to the end. Yours till death, Jesse." By the time this letter was finished, numerous old gentlemen with wigs or without were observed to be polishing their glasses. Mr. Wimps' examination was resumed. After making these discoveries, what did you do? I made inquiries about Miss Diamond, and found Mr. Constance had visited her once or twice in the evening. I imagined there would be some traces of a pecuniary connection. I was allowed by the family to inspect Mr. Constance's cheque-book, and found a paid cheque made out for twenty-five pounds in the name of Miss Diamond. By inquiry at the bank, I found it had been cashed on November 12th of last year, and then applied for a warrant against the prisoner. Cross-examined. Do you suggest that the prisoner opened Mr. Constance's bedroom with the key you found? Certainly. Certainly. Carl and Brown, QC sarcastically. And locked the door from within with it on leaving. Certainly. Will you have the goodness to explain how the trick was done? It wasn't done, laughter. The prisoner probably locked the door from the outside. Those who broke it open naturally imagined it had been locked from the inside when they found the key inside. The key would, on this theory, be on the floor, as the outside locking could not have been affected if it had been in the lock. The first persons to enter the room would naturally believe it had been thrown down in the bursting of the door. Or it might have been left sticking very loosely inside the lock so as not to interfere with the turning of the outside key. In which case it would also probably have been thrown to the ground. Indeed. Very ingenious. And can you also explain how the prisoner could have belted the door within from the outside? I can. Renewed sensation. There is only one way in which it was possible. And that was, of course, a mere conjurer's illusion. Because a locked door to appear bolted in addition it would only be necessary for the person on the inside of the door to rest the staple containing the bolt from the woodwork. The bolt in Mr. Constance's bedroom worked perpendicularly. When the staple was turned off it would simply remain at rest on the pin of the bolt instead of supporting it or keeping it fixed. A person bursting open the door and finding the staple resting on the pin and turning away from the lintel of the door, when, of course, imagine he had torn it away, never dreaming the resting off had been done beforehand. A applause in court which was instantly checked by the ushers. The counsel for the defence felt he had been entrapped in attempting to be sarcastic with the redoubtable detective. Grudman seemed green with envy. It was the one thing he had not thought of. Mrs. Drabdump, Grudman, Inspector Howlett, and Sergeant Runnymede were recalled and re-examined by the embarrassed Sir Charles Brown Harland as to the exact condition of the lock and the bolt and the position of the key. It turned out as Wimper'd suggested. So priests possessed were the witnesses with the conviction that the door was locked and bolted from the inside when it was burst open that they were a little hazy about the exact details. The damage had been repaired so that it was all a question of precise past observation. The inspector and the sergeant testified that the key was in the lock when they saw it, though both the mortise and the bolt were broken. They were not prepared to say that Wimper's theory was impossible. They would even admit that it was quite possible that the staple of the bolt had been torn off beforehand. Mrs. Drabdump could give no clear account of such petty facts in view of her immediate engrossing interest in the horrible sight of the corpse. Grudman alone was positive that the key was in the door when he burst it open. No, he did not remember picking it up from the floor and putting it in, and he was certain that the staple of the bolt was not broken from the resistance he had experienced in trying to shake the upper panels of the door by the prosecution. Don't you think from the comparative ease with which the door yielded to your onslaught that it is highly probable that the pin of the bolt was not in a firmly fixed staple, but in one already detached from the woodwork of the lintel? The door did not yield so easily. But you must be a Hercules. Not quite. The bolt was old and the woodwork crumbling. The lot was new and shoddy, but I've always been a strong man. Very well, Mr. Grudman. I hope you will never appear at the music halls, or laughter. Jessie Diamond's landlady was the next witness for the prosecution. She corroborated Wimp's statements as to Constance's occasional visits and narrated how the girl had been enlisted by the dead philanthropist as a collaborator in some of his enterprises. But the most telling portion of her evidence was the story of how, late at night on December 3rd, the prisoner called upon her and inquired wildly about the whereabouts of his sweetheart. He said he had just received a mysterious letter from Miss Diamond saying she was gone. She, the landlady, replied that she could have told him that a few weeks ago, as her ungrateful lodger was gone now some three weeks without leaving a hint behind her, in answer to his most un-gentlemanly raging and raving, she told him it served him right, as he should have looked after her better and not kept away for so long. She reminded him that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out and a girl of Jessie's attractions need not pine away as she has seemed to be pining away, for lack of appreciation. He then called her a liar and left her, and she hoped never to see his face again, though she was not surprised to see it in the dock. Mr. Fitz James Montgomery, a bank clerk, remembered cashing the check produced. He particularly remembered it because he paid the money to a very pretty girl. She took the entire amount in gold. At this point the case was adjourned. Paul Canticott was the first witness called for the prosecution on the resumption of the trial. Pressed as to whether he had not told Mr. Wimp that he had overheard the prisoner denouncing Mr. Constant, he could not say. He had not actually heard the prisoner's denunciations. He might have given Mr. Wimp a false impression, but then Mr. Wimp was so prosaically literal. Laughter. Mr. Crowell had told him something of the kind. Once examined he said Jesse Diamond was a rare spirit, and she always reminded him of Joan of Arc. Mr. Crowell being called was extremely agitated. He refused to take the oath and inform the court that the Bible was a fad. He could not swear by anything so self-contradictory. He would affirm he could not deny, though he looked like wishing to, that the prisoner had at first been rather mistrustful of Mr. Constant, but he was certain that the feeling had quickly worn off. Yes, he was a great friend of the prisoner, but he didn't see why that should invalidate his testimony, especially as he had not taken an oath. Certainly the prisoner seemed rather depressed when he saw him on bank holiday, but it was overwork on behalf of the people and for the demolition of the fads. Several other familiars of the prisoner gave more or less reluctant testimony as to his sometime prejudice against the amateur rival labour leader. His expressions of dislike had been strong and bitter. The prosecution also produced a poster announcing that the prisoner would preside at a great meeting of clerks in December 4th. He had not turned up at the meeting, nor sent any explanation. Finally there was the evidence of the detectives who originally arrested him at Liverpool Docks in view of his suspicious demeanour. This completed the case for the prosecution. Sir Charles Brown Harland QC rose with a swagger and a rustle of his silk gown and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said that he did not propose to call many witnesses. The hypothesis of the prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, and so dependent upon a bundle of interdependent probabilities that it crumbled away at the merest touch. The prisoner's character was of unblemished integrity. His last public appearance had been made on the same platform with Mr Gladstone, and his honesty and hide-mindedness had been vouched for by a statesman of the highest standing. His movements could be accounted for from hour to hour, and those with which the prosecution credited him rested on no tangible evidence whatever. He was also credited with superhuman ingenuity and diabolical cunning of which he had shown no previous symptom. Hypothesis was piled on hypothesis, as in the old Oriental legend where the world rested on the elephant and the elephant on the tortoise. It might be worthwhile, however, to point out that it was at least quite likely that the death of Mr Constant had not taken place before seven, and as the prisoner left Euston Station at 7.15 for Liverpool, he could certainly not have got there from Beau in the time. Also that it was hardly possible for the prisoner who could prove being at Euston Station at 5.25 a.m. to travel backwards and forwards to Glover Street and commit the crime all within less than two hours. The real facts, said Sir Charles impressively, are most simple. The prisoner partly from pressure of work, partly he had no wish to conceal, from worldly ambition, had begun to neglect Miss Diamond to whom he was engaged to be married. The man was but human, and his head was a little turned by his growing importance. Nevertheless at heart he was still deeply attached to Miss Diamond. She, however, appears to have jumped to the conclusion that he had ceased to love her, that she was unworthy of him, unfitted by education, to take her place side by side with him in the new spheres to which he was mounting, that in short she was a drag on his career. Being by all accounts a girl of remarkable force of character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving London, and fearing lest her affion's husband's conscientiousness should induce him to sacrifice himself to her, dreading also, perhaps, her own weakness, she made the parting absolute, and the place of her refuge a mystery. A theory has been suggested which drags an honoured name in the Maya. A theory so superfluous that I shall only allude to it, that Arthur Constant could have seduced, or had any improper relations with his friends betrothed, is an hypothesis to which the lives of both give the lie. Before leaving London or England Miss Diamond wrote to her aunt in Devonport, her only living relative in this country, asking her as a great favour to forward an addressed letter to the prisoner a fortnight after receipt. The aunt obeyed implicitly. This was the letter which fell like a thunderbolt on the prisoner on the night of December 3. All his old love returned, he was full of self-reproach and pity for the poor gal. The letter read ominously. Perhaps she was going to put an end to herself. His first thought was to rush up to his friend Constant to seek his advice. Perhaps Constant knew something of the affair. The prisoner knew the two were in not infrequent communication. It is possible, my lord and gentleman of the jury, I do not wish to follow the methods of the prosecution and confuse theory with fact, so I say it is possible, that Mr. Constant had supplied her with the twenty-five pounds to leave the country. He was like a brother to her, perhaps even acted imprudently in calling upon her, though neither dreamed of evil. It is possible that he may have encouraged her in her abnegation and in her altruistic aspirations, perhaps even without knowing their exact drift, for does he not speak in his very last letter of the fine female characters he was meeting and the influence for good he had over individual human souls. Still, this we can now never know, unless the dead speak or the absent return. It is also not impossible that Miss Diamond was entrusted with the twenty-five pounds for charitable purposes, but to come back to certainties. The prisoner consulted Mr. Constant about the letter. He then ran to Miss Diamond's lodgings in Stepney Green, knowing beforehand his trouble would be futile. The letter bore the postmark of Devonport. He knew the girl had an aunt there, possibly she might have gone to her. He could not telegraph, for he was ignorant of the address. He consulted his bradshaw, and resolved to leave by the five-thirty a.m. from Paddington, and told his landlady so. He left the letter in the bradshaw, which ultimately got thrust among a pile of papers under the sofa, so that he had to get another. He was careless and disorderly, and the key found by Mr. Wimp in his sofa, which he was absurdly supposed to have hidden there after the murder, must have lain there for some years, having been lost there in the days when he occupied the bedroom afterwards rented by Mr. Constant. For it was his own sofa removed from that room, and the suction of sofas was well known. Afraid to miss his train, he did not undress on that distressful night. Meanwhile, the thought occurred to him that Jesse was too clever a girl to leave so easy a trail, and he jumped to the conclusion that she would be going to her married brother in America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid her aunt farewell. He determined, therefore, to get to Liverpool without wasting time at Devonport to institute inquiries. Not suspecting the delay in the transit of the letter, he thought he might yet stop her, even at the landing stage or on the tender. Unfortunately, his cab went slowly in the fog. He missed the first train, and wondered about brooding disconsolently in the mist till the second. At Liverpool, his suspicious, excited demeanor procured his momentary arrest. Since then the thought of the lost girl has haunted and broken him. That is the whole, the plain, and the sufficing story. The effective witnesses for the defence were indeed few. It is so hard to prove a negative. There was Jesse's aunt who bore out the statement of the Council for the Defence. There were porters who saw him leave Euston by the 7.15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the 5.15. There was the cab man, 2.138, who drove him to Euston just in time he, witness, thought, to catch the 5.15am. Thus examination the cab man got a little confused. He was asked whether, if he really picked up the prisoner at Bo Raway station at about 4.30, he ought not have caught the first train at Euston. He said the fog made him drive rather slowly, but admitted the mist was transparent enough to warrant full speed. He also admitted being a strong trade unionist. It QC artfully extorting the admission as if it were of the utmost significance. Finally there were numerous witnesses of all sorts and conditions to the prisoner's high character as well as to Arthur Constance's blameless and immoral life. In his closing speech on the third day of the trial Sir Charles pointed out with great exhaustiveness and cogency the flimsiness of the case for the prosecution, the number of hypotheses it involved and their mutual independence. Mrs. Drabb-Dump was a witness whose evidence must be accepted with extreme caution. The jury must remember that she was unable to disassociate her observations from her inferences and thought that the prisoner and Mr. Constance were quarrelling merely because they were agitated. He dissected her evidence and showed that it entirely bore out the story of the defense. He asked the jury to bear in mind that no positive evidence, whether of Cadman or others, had been given of the various and complicated movements attributed to the prisoner on the morning of December 4th between the hours of 5.25 and 7.15 a.m., and that the most important witness on the theory of the prosecution, he meant of course Miss Diamond, had not been produced. Even if she were dead, and her body were found, no countenance would be given to the theory of the prosecution, for the mere conviction that her lover had deserted her would be a sufficient explanation of her suicide. Beyond the ambiguous letter, no tittle of evidence of her dishonour, on which the bulk of the case against the prison arrested, had been adduced. As for the motive of political jealousy, that had been a mere passing-cloud, the two men had become fast friends. As to the circumstances of the alleged crime, the medical evidence was, on the whole, in favour of the time of death being late, and the prisoner had left London at a quarter-past seven. The drugging theory was observed, and as for the two clever bolt-and-lock theories, Mr. Grodman, a trained scientific observer, had poo-poo'd them. He would solemnly exhort their jury to remember that if they condemned the prisoner, they would not only send an innocent man to an ignominious death on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, but they would deprive the working men of this country of one of their truest friends and their ablest leader. The conclusion of Sir Charles's vigorous speech was greeted with irrepressible applause. Mr. Spigot Q. C., in closing the case for the prosecution, asked the jury to return a verdict against the prisoner for as malicious and premeditated a crime as ever disgraced the annals of any civilised country. His cleverness and education had only been utilised for the devil's needs, while his reputation had been used as a cloak. Everything pointed strongly to the prisoner's guilt. Upon receiving Miss Diamond's letter, announcing her shame and probably her intention to commit suicide, he had hastened upstairs to denounce Constance. He had then rushed to the Goals' lodgings, and, finding his worst fears confirmed, planned at once his diabolically ingenious scheme of revenge. He told his landlady he was going to Devonport, so that if he bungled, the police would be put temporarily off his track. His real destination was Liverpool, for he intended to leave the country. Lest however his plan should break down here too, he arranged an ingenious alibi by being driven to Euston for the five-fifteen train to Liverpool. The cabman would not know he did not intend to go by it, but meant to return to 11 Glover Street there to perpetrate this foul crime, interruption to which he had possibly barred by drugging his landlady. His presence at Liverpool, whether he really went by the second train, would corroborate the cabman's story. That night he had not undressed nor gone to bed. He had plotted out his devilish scheme till it was perfect. The fog came as an unexpected ally to cover his movements. Jealousy, outraged affection, the desire for revenge, the lust for political power. These were human. They might pity the criminal. They could not find him innocent of the crime. Mr Justice Kroge, summing up, began dead against the prisoner. Reviewing the evidence he pointed out the plausible hypotheses neatly dovetailed did not necessarily weaken one another, the fitting so well together of the whole rather making for the truth of the parts. Besides, the case for the prosecution was as far from being all hypothesis as the case for the defence was from excluding hypotheses. The key, the letter, the reluctance to produce the letter, the heated interview with Constance, the misstatement about the prisoner's destination, the flight to Liverpool, the false tale about searching for a hymn, the denunciations of Constance. All these were facts. On the other hand there were various lacunae and hypotheses in the case for the defence. Even conceding the somewhat dubious alibi afforded by the prisoner's presence at Euston at 5.25 a.m., there was no attempt to account for his movements between that and 7.15 a.m. It was as possible that he returned to Bow as that he lingered about Euston. There was nothing in the medical evidence to make his guilt impossible. Nor was there anything inherently impossible in Constance yielding to the sudden temptation of a beautiful girl, nor in a working girl deeming herself deserted, temporarily succumbing to the fascinations of a gentleman and regretting it bitterly afterwards. What had become of the girl was a mystery. Others might have been one of the nameless corpses which the tide swirls up on its slimy banks. The jury must remember, too, that the relation might not have actually passed into its honour. It might have been just grave enough to smite the girl's conscience and to induce her to behave as she had done. It was enough that her letter should have excited the jealousy of the prisoner. There was one other point which she would like to impress on the jury, and which the counsel for the prosecution had not sufficiently insisted upon. This was that the prisoner's guiltiness was the only plausible solution that had ever been advanced of the Bow mystery. The medical evidence agreed that Mr. Constance did not die by his own hand. Someone must therefore have murdered him. The number of people who could have had any possible reason or opportunity to murder him was extremely small. The prisoner had both reason and opportunity. By what logicians called the method of exclusion, suspicion would attach to him on even slight evidence. The actual evidence was strong and plausible, and now that Mr. Wimps' ingenious theory had enabled them to understand how the door could have been apparently locked and bolted from within, the last difficulty and the last argument for suicide had been removed. The prisoner's guilt was as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it. If they let him go free, the Bow mystery might help's forth be placed among the archives of unavenged assassinations. Having thus well nigh hung the prisoner, the judge wound up by insisting on the high probability of the story for the defense, though that too was dependent in important details upon the prisoner's mere private statements to his counsel. The jury, being by this time sufficiently muddled by his impartiality, were dismissed, with the exhortation to allow due weight to every fact and probability in determining their righteous verdict. The minutes ran into hours, but the jury did not return. The shadows of night fell across the wreaking-fevered court before they announced their verdict. Guilty! The judge put on his black cap. The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco. The evening banquet was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won. Rodman felt like a whipped cur. End of Chapter 10. The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill, read by Adrian Pretzelis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill, Chapter 11. So you were right. Denzel could not help saying, as he greeted Rodman a week afterwards, I shall not live to tell the story of how you discovered the bow murderer. Sit down, growled Rodman. Perhaps you will after all. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzel was sorry he had spoken. I sent for you, Rodman said, to tell you that on the night Wimper rested Malt Lake, I had made preparations for your arrest. Denzel gasped. What for? My dear Denzel, there is a little law in this country invented for the confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the beautiful is only allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame you for not being satisfied with Jane. She's a good servant, but a bad mistress. But it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a prior right to you. And unjust to Jane not to let her know of the contract with Kitty. They both know it now well enough, cast them, said the poet. Yes, your secrets are like your situations. You can't keep them long. My poor poet, I pity you, betwixt the devil and the deep sea. There are a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of an arrest for Bigamyre. Neither loves me. I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in my house to tell my secrets to Wimp. And you plant one in Wimp's house to tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then. Upon my honour, you wrong me. Jane brought me here, not I, Jane. As for Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as finding her installed in Wimp's house. She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides, she probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must do something for a living. You wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife. Serve your right, my polygamist poet. But why should you arrest me? Revenge, Denzil. I've been the best friend you have read in this cold, prosaic world. You've eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my book, smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an important piece of information, bearing on a mystery about which I am thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp. I didn't, stammered Denzil. Liar! Do you think that Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I discovered your two marriages, I determined to have you arrested for your treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on the wrong scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake, he was going to make a greater ass of himself that even nature had been able to do, then I forgave you. I'll let you walk about the earth and drink freely. Now is Wimp who crows. Everybody pats him on the back. They call him the mystery man of the Scotland Yard Tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged. And all through your telling Wimp about Jesse Diamond. It was you yourself, said Denzil, suddenly. Everybody was giving it up. And you said, let us find all that Arthur Constant did in the last few months of his life. Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jesse sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant if I'd known he'd touched her. He wound up with irrelevant indignation. Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked ad majorum glorium of Wimp, and yet had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the Christmas party. What's past is past, he said gruffly. But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you go to Portland. How can I help Tom hanging? Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the Great Petition. Find out where Jesse Diamond is. The girl who holds the proof of Mortlake's innocence. You really believe him innocent? Don't be satirical, Denzel. Haven't I taken the chair at all the meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the press? I thought it was only despite Wimp. Rubbish! It's all to say, poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant than you did. He laughed an unpleasant laugh. Denzel beat him farewell, frigid with fear. Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had become the leader of the rescue party. Suggestions, subscriptions came from all sides. The suggestions were burned. The subscriptions acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl. Lucy Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine testimony to her faith in her dead lover's honour. The release of the jury had unloosed the greater jury, which always now sits upon the smaller. Every means was taken to nullify the value of the palladium of British liberty. The foremen and the jurors were interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges. The home secretary, who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the crown, was vituperated and sundry provincial persons wrote confidentially to the queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered many by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves. And well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects of socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed suicide by esoteric Buddhism as witness his devotion to Madame Bavlatsky, or he had been murdered by his Mahatma, or victimised by hypnotism, mesmerism, sonambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great point was, Jesse Diamond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric cullant scoured the civilised world in search of her. What wonder if the shrewder sought divine that the indomitable detective had fixed his last hope on the girl's guilt? If Jesse had wrongs why should she not have avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the poet of Joan of Arc? Another week passed. The shadow of the gallows crept over the days, on, on, remorselessly drawing nearer as the last ray of hope sunk below the horizon. The home secretary remained inflexible. The great petitions discharged their signatures at him in vain. He was a conservative, sternly conscientious. And the mere insinuation that his obstinacy was due to the politics of the condemned only hardened him against the temptation of a cheap reputation for magnanimity. He would not even grant a respite to increase the chances of the discovery of Jesse Diamond. In the last of the three weeks there was a final monster meeting of protest. Groedman again took the chair, and several distinguished fatists were present, as well as numerous respectable members of society. The home secretary acknowledged the receipt of their resolutions. The trade unions were divided in their allegiance. Some whispered of faith and hope, others of financial defalcations. The former assayed to organize a procession and an indignation meeting on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday fixed for the execution, but it fell through on a rumour of confession. The Monday papers contained a last masterly letter from Groedman exposing the weakness of the evidence, but they knew nothing of a confession. The prisoner was mute and disdainful, professing little regard for a life empty of love and burdened with self-reproach. He refused to see a clergyman. He was accorded an interview with Miss Brent in the presence of a jailer, and solemnly aspirated his respect for her dead lover's memory. Monday buzzed with rumours. The evening papers chronicled them hour by hour. A poignant anxiety was abroad. The girl would be found. Some miracle would happen. A reprieve would arrive. The sentence would be commuted. But the short day darkened into night, even as Mortlake's short day was darkening, and the shadow of the gallows crept on and on, and seemed to mingle with the twilight. Crowl stood at the door of his shop, unable to work. His big grey eyes were heavy with unshed tears. The dingy, wintry road seemed one vast cemetery. The street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused sounds of the street life reached his ear as from another world. He did not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded, and flashed upon the background of the duskiness. Crowl stood beside him, smoking in silence. A cold fear was at his heart. That terrible grudman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round Mortlake, he felt the convicts change tightening round himself. And yet there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the gas-lamp across the way. Grudman had obtained an interview with the condemned late that afternoon, and the parting had been painful. But the evening paper that in its turn had obtained an interview with the ex-detective announced on its placard, Grudman Still Confident. And the thousands who yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzel had bought the paper, and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague assurance that the indefatigable Grudman was still almost pathetically expectant of the miracle. Denzel did not share the expectation. He meditated flight. Peter, he said at last, I'm afraid it's all over. Well-nodded, heartbroken, all over, he repeated, and to think that he dies, and it is all over. He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut out the stars. Poor young fellow, to-night alive and thinking, to-morrow night a clod, with no more sense or motion than a bit of leather. No compensation, nowhere, for being cut off innocent in the pride of youth and strength. A man who has always preached the useful, day and night, and toiled and suffered for his fellows. Where's the justice of it? Where's the justice of it? he demanded fiercely. Again his wet eyes wandered upwards towards heaven. That heaven away from which the dear soul of a dead saint at the antipodes was speeding into infinite space. Well, where was the justice for Arthur Constant, if he too was innocent? St. Denzel, really, Peter, I don't see why you should take it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed labour-leaders are, after all, man of no aesthetic refinement, with no sense of the beautiful. You cannot expect them to be exempt from the course of forms of crime. Humanity must look too far other-leaders to the seers and the poets. Kent-a-cott, if you say Tom's guilty, I'll knock you down. The little cobbler turned upon his tall friend like a roused lion. Then he added, I beg your pardon, Kent-a-cott, I don't mean that. After all, I've got no grounds. The judges are honest men, and with gifts I can't lay claim to. But I believe in Tom with all my heart, and if Tom is guilty, I'll believe in the cause of the people with all my heart all the same. The fads are doomed to death. They may be reprieved, but they must die at last. He drew a deep sigh, and looked along the dreary road. It was quite dark now, but the light of the lamps and the gas in the shop windows, the dull monotonous road, revealed all its sordid, familiar outlines, with its long stretches of chill pavement, its unlovely architecture, and its endless stream of prosaic pedestrians. A sudden consciousness of the futility of his existence pierced the little cobbler like an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a hundred million lives like his, swelling and breaking like bubbles on a dark ocean, unheeded, uncared for. A newsboy passed along, clabbering, The bow murderer, preparations for his execution! A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's frame. His eyes ranged sightlessly after the boy. The merciful tears filled them at last. The cause of the people, he murmured brokenly, I believe in the cause of the people. There is nothing else. Peter, come into tea, your catch cold! said Mrs. Crowell. Denzel went into tea, and Peter followed. Meanwhile round the house of the Home Secretary, who was in town, an ever-augmenting crowd was gathered, eager to catch the first whisper of a reprieve. The house was guarded by a cordon of police, but there was no inconsiderable danger of popular riot. At times a section of the crowd groaned and hooted. Once a volley of stones was discharged at the windows. The newsboys were busy vending their special editions, and the reporters struggled through the crowd, clutching descriptive pencils, and ready to push off to telegraph offices should anything extra-special occur. Telegraph boys were coming up every now and again with threats, messages, petitions and exhortations from all parts of the country to the unfortunate Home Secretary, who was striving to keep his aching head cool as he went through the voluminous evidence for the last time and pondered over the more important letters which the greater jury had contributed to the obscuration of the problem. Groedman's letter in that morning's paper shook him most. Under his scientific analysis the circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard. Then the poor man read the judges summing up, and the chain became tempered steel. The noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his study like the roar of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him, the more he essayed to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death. And the crowd grew and grew as men came away from their work. There were many that loved the man who lay in the jaws of death and a spirit of mad revolt surged in their breasts, and the sky was grey and the bleak night deepened and the shadow of the gallows crept on. Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur spread through the crowd, a vague whisper of no one knew what. Something had happened, somebody was coming. A second later, and one of the outskirts of the throng was agitated, and a convulsive cheer went up from it, and was taken up infectiously all along the street. The crowd parted, a handsome dash through the centre. Groedman, Groedman, shouted those who recognized the occupant, Groedman, hurrah! Groedman was outwardly calm and pale, but his eyes glittered. He waved his hand encouragingly as the handsome dashed up to the door, cleaving the turbulent crowd as a canoe cleaves the waters. Groedman sprang out. The constables at the port hall made way for him respectfully. He knocked imperatively. The door was opened cautiously, a boy rushed up and delivered a telegram. Groedman forced his way in, gave his name, and insisted on seeing the home secretary on a matter of life and death. Those near the door heard his words and cheered, and the crowd divined the good omen, and the air throbbed with cannonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang in Groedman's ears as the door slammed behind him. The reporters struggled to the front. An excited knot of working men pressed round the arrested handsome. They took the horse out. A dozen enthusiasts struggled for the honour of placing themselves between the shafts, and the crowd awaited Groedman. End of Chapter 11 The Big Boe Mystery by Israel Zangwill, read by Adrian Pretzelis, Santa Rosa, California, August 2007. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Big Boe Mystery by Israel Zangwill, Chapter 12 Groedman was ushered into the conscientious minister's study. The doughy chief of the agitation was perhaps the one man who could not be denied. As he entered, the Home Secretary's face seemed lit up with relief. At a sight from his master, the Emanuensis, who had brought in the last telegram, took it back with him into the outer room where he worked. Needless to say, not a tithe of the minister's correspondence ever came under his own eyes. "'You have a good reason for troubling me, I suppose, Mr. Groedman?' said the Home Secretary almost cheerfully. "'Of course, it is about Mortlake.' "'It is, and I have the best of all reasons.' "'Take a seat. Proceed.' "'Pri, do not consider me impertinent, but have you ever given any attention to the science of evidence?' "'How do you mean?' asked the Home Secretary, rather puzzled, adding with a melancholy smile. "'I have had too lately.' "'Of course. I have never been a criminal lawyer, like some of my predecessors, but I should hardly speak of it as a science. I look upon it as a question of common sense.' "'Pardon me, sir. It is the most subtle and difficult of all the sciences. It is, indeed, rather the science of the sciences. What is the whole of inductive logic, as laid down, say, by Bacon and Mill, but an attempt to appraise the value of evidence?' The said evidence, being the trails left by the Creator, so to speak, the Creator has, I say in all reverence, drawn up a myriad red herrings across the track. But the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the surface does lie. "'Very interesting, Mr. Grodman. But really. Bear with me, sir.' The science of evidence being thus so extremely subtle, and demanding the most acute and trained observation of fact, the most comprehensive understanding of human psychology, is naturally given over to professors who have not the remotest idea that things are not what they seem, and that everything is other than it appears. To professors, most of whom by their year-long devotion to the shop counter or the desk have acquired an intimate acquaintance with all the infinite shades and complexities of things and human nature. When twelve of these professors are put in a box, it is called a jury. When one of these professors is put in a box by himself, he is called a witness. The retailing of evidence, the observation of the facts, is given over to people who go through their lives without eyes. In the appreciation of evidence, the judging of these facts is surrendered to people who may possibly be adept in weighing out pounds of sugar, apart from their sheer inability to fulfil either function, to observe or to judge. Their observation and their judgment alike are vitiated by all sorts of irrelevant prejudices. You are attacking trial by jury. Not necessarily. I'm prepared to accept that scientifically, on the ground that there are, as a rule, only two alternatives, the balance of probabilities slightly in favour of the true decision being come to. Then, in cases where experts like myself have got up the evidence, the jury can be made to see through trained eyes. The Home Secretary tapped impatiently with his foot. I can't listen to abstract theorising, he said. Have you any fresh concrete evidence? Sir, everything depends on our getting down to the root of the matter. What percentage of average evidence should you think is thorough, plain, simple, unvarnished fact, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Fifty, said the Minister, humouring him a little. Not five. I say nothing of lapses of memory, of inborn defects of observational power, though the suspiciously precise recollection of dates and events possessed by ordinary witnesses in important trials taking place years after the occurrence is involved is one of the most amazing things in the curiosity of modern jurisprudence. I defy you, sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you were saying I'm doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody whose lives does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the sort. Unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this, by the way, the great obstacle to voracious observation is the element of pre-possession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never see anyone more than once, if that the first time we meet a man we may possibly see him as he is? The second time our vision is coloured and modified by the memory of the first. Do our friends appear to us as they appear to strangers? Do our rooms, our furniture, our pipes strike our eyes as they would strike the eye of an outsider looking on them for the first time? Can a mother see her babes ugliness, or a lover, is mistress's shortcomings, though they stare everybody else in the face? Can we see ourselves as others see us? No. Habit, pre-possession changes all. The mind is a large factor in every so-called external fact. The eye sees sometimes what it wishes to see. More often what it expects to see. You follow me, sir? The Home Secretary nodded his head less impatiently. He was beginning to be interested. The hubbub from without broke faintly about their ears. To give you a definite example. Mr. Wimp said when I burst open the door of Mr. Constance's room on the morning of December 4th and saw that the staple of the bolt had been rested by the pin from the lintel, I jumped at once to the conclusion that I had broken the bolt. Now I admit that this was so. Only in things like this you do not seem to conclude you jump so fast that you can see or seem to. On the other hand, when you see a standing ring of fire produced by whirling a burning stick, you do not believe in its continuous existence. It is the same when witnessing a legitimate performance. Seeing is not always believing, despite the proverb, but believing is often seeing. It is not to the point that in that little matter of the door Wimp was as hopelessly and incurably wrong as he has been in everything all along. The door was securely bolted. Still, I confess that I should have seen that I had broken the bolt in forcing the door even if it had been broken beforehand. Never once since December 4th did this possibility occur to me till Wimp with perverted ingenuity suggested it. If this is the case with a trained observer, one moreover fully conscious of this inericatable tendency of the human mind, how must it be with an untrained observer? Come to the point, come to the point," said the Home Secretary, putting out his hand as if it itched to touch the bell on the writing table. Such as went on Grodman imperturbably, such as Mrs. Drabb-Dump, that worthy person is unable by repeated violent locking to arouse a lodger who yet desires to be aroused. She becomes alarmed. She rushes across to get my assistance. I burst open the door. What do you think the good lady expected to see? Mr. Constant murdered, I suppose," murmured the Home Secretary, wonderingly. Exactly. And so she saw it. And what should you think was the condition of Arthur Constant when the door yielded to my violent exertions and flew open? Why, was he not dead? gasped the Home Secretary, his heart fluttering violently. Dead? A healthy young fellow like that. When the door flew open, Arthur Constant was sleeping the sleep of the just. It was a deep, a very deep sleep, of course, else the blows at his door would long since have awakened him. But all the while Mrs. Drabb-Dump's fancy was picturing her lodger cold and stark. The poor young fellow was lying in bed in a nice warm sleep. You mean to say you found Arthur Constant alive? As you were last night, the Minister was silent, striving confusedly to take in the situation. Outside the crowd was cheering again. It was probably to pass the time. Then when was he murdered? Immediately afterwards. By whom? Well, that is, if you will pardon me, not a very intelligent question. Science and common sense are in a cold for once. Try the method of exhaustion. It must have been either by Mrs. Drabb-Dump or myself. You mean to say that Mrs. Drabb-Dump? Poor dear Mrs. Drabb-Dump, you don't deserve this of your Home Secretary, the idea of that good lady. It was you? Calm yourself, my dear Home Secretary. There is nothing to be alarmed at. It was a solitary experiment, and I intend it to remain so. The noise without grew louder. Three cheers for Groedman! Hip hip hooray! Fell faintly on their ears, but the Minister, pallid and deeply moved, touched the bell. The Home Secretary's Home Secretary appeared. He looked at the great man's agitated face with suppressed surprise. Thank you for calling in your immanuences," said Groedman. I intended to ask you to lend me your services. I suppose he can write shorthand? The Minister nodded, speechless. That is well. I intend this statement to form the basis of an appendix to the twenty-fifth edition, sort of silver wedding, of my book Criminals I Have Caulked. Mr. Denzel Canticott, who, by the will I have made today, is appointed my literary executor, will have the task of working up with literary and dramatic touches after the model of the other chapters of my book. I have every confidence that you will be able to do me as much justice from a literary point of view as you, sir, no doubt will, from a legal. I feel certain he will succeed in catching the style of the other chapters to perfection. Templeton!" whispered the Home Secretary. This man may be a lunatic. The attempt to solve the Big Bo mystery may have addled his brain. Still," he added aloud, it will be as well to take down his statement in shorthand. Thank you, sir," said Groedman heartily. Ready, Mr. Templeton? Here goes. My career, till I left the Scotland Yard Detective Department, is known to all the world. Is that too fast for you, Mr. Templeton? A little? Well, I'll go slower. But pull me up if I forget to keep the break on. When I retired, I discovered that I was a bachelor. But it was too late to marry. Time hung heavy on my hands. The preparation of my book Criminals I Have Caulked kept me occupied for some months. When it was published, I had nothing more to do but think. I had plenty of money, and that was safely invested. There was no call for speculation. The future was meaningless to me. I regretted I had not elected to die in harness. As I had lulled men must, I lived in the past. I went over and over again my ancient exploits. I reread my book. And as I thought and thought, away from the excitement of the actual hunt, and seeing the facts in a truer perspective, so it grew daily clearer to me that Criminals are more fools than rogues. Every crime I had traced, however cleverly perpetrated, was, from the point of view of penitrability, a weak failure. Traces and trails were left on all sides, ragged edges, rough-hewned corners. In short, the job was botched, artistic completeness unattained. To the vulgar, my feet might seem marvellous. The average man is mystified to grasp how you detect the letter E in a simple cryptogram. To myself, they were as commonplace as the crimes they unveiled. To me now, with my lifelong study of the science of evidence, it seemed possible to commit not merely one but a thousand crimes that should be absolutely undiscoverable, and yet Criminals would go on sinning and giving themselves away in the same old grooves. No originality, no dash, no individual insight, no fresh conception. One would imagine there were an academy of crime with forty thousand arm-chairs, and gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought, there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes and please myself by imagining them done, but would they really work out in practice? Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself. The subject, whom or what, accident should determine, I itched to commence with murder, to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burnt to startle and baffle the world, especially the world of which I'd ceased to be. Outwardly I was calm and spoke to the people about me as usual. Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported with my pet theories and fitted them mentally on every one I met. Every friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped with. I was plotting out a murder without leaving a clue. There is not one of my friends or acquaintances I have not done away with in thought. There is no public man, have no fear, my dear Home Secretary. I have not planned to assassinate secretly, mysteriously, unintelligibly, undiscoverably. Ah, how I could give the stock criminals points with their second-hand motives, their conventional conceptions, their commonplace details, their lack of artistic feeling and restraint. The crowd had again started cheering. Impatient as the watchers were, they felt that no news were good news. The longer the interview accorded by the Home Secretary to the Chairman of the Defence Committee, the greater the hope his obduracy was melting. The idol of the people would be saved, and Grodman and Tom Mortlake were mingled in the exultant plaudits. The late Arthur Constance, continued the great criminologist, came to live nearly opposite me. I cultivated his acquaintance, he was a lovable young fellow, an excellent subject for experiment. I do not know when I have ever taken to a man more. From the moment I first set eyes on him, there was a peculiar sympathy between us. We were drawn to each other, I felt instinctively he would be the man. I loved to hear him speak enthusiastically of the brotherhood of man. I, who knew the brotherhood of man, was to the ape, the serpent and the tiger. And he seemed to find pleasure in stealing a moment's chat with me from his engrossing self-appointed duties. It is a pity humanity should have been robbed of so valuable a life, but it had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of December 3rd he came to me. Naturally I said nothing about this visit at the inquest or the trial. His object was to consult me mysteriously about some girl. He said he had privately lent her money, which she was to repay at her convenience. What the money was for, he did not know, except that it was somehow connected with an act of abnegation in which he had vaguely encouraged her. The girl had since disappeared, and he was in distress about her. He would not tell me who it was, of course now, sir. You know as well as I, it was Jesse Diamond. But I asked for advice as to how to set about finding her. He mentioned that Mortlake was leaving for Devonport by the first train the next day. Of old I should have connected these two facts and sought the thread. Now, as he spoke, all my thoughts were dyed red. He was suffering perceptively from toothache, and in answer to my sympathetic inquiries told me it had been allowing him very little sleep. Everything combined to invite the trial of one of my favourite theories. I spoke to him in a fatherly way, and when I attended some vague advice about the girl, I made him promise to secure a night's rest before he faced the arduous tram man's meeting in the morning by taking a sleeping draught. I gave him a quantity of sulfonyl and a phyle. It is a new drug which produces protracted sleep without disturbing digestion, and which I use myself. He promised faithfully to take the draught, and I also exhorted him earnestly to bolt and bar and lock himself in, so as to stop up every chink or aperture by which the cold air of the winter's night might creep into the room. I remonstrated with him on the careless manner he treated his body, and he laughed in his good-humoured gentle way, and promised to obey me in all things, and he did that Mrs. Drab-Dump failed into rousing with crime murder. I took for certain. She's built that way. And even Sir Charles Brown-Harlan remarked she habitually takes her prepossessions for facts, her inferences for observations. She forecasts the future in grey. Most women of Mrs. Drab-Dump's class would have behaved as she did. She happened to be a peculiarly favourable specimen for working on by suggestion, but I would have undertaken to produce the same effect on almost any woman. The key to the big bow mystery is feminine psychology. The only uncertain link in the chain was would Mrs. Drab-Dump rush across to get me to break open the door? Women always rushed for a man. I was well neither nearest, and certainly the most authoritative man in the street, and I took it for granted she would. But suppose she hadn't? The Home Secretary could not help asking. Then the murder wouldn't have happened. That's all. In due course Arthur Constance would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the door would have found him sleeping. No harm done. Nobody any the wiser. I could hardly sleep myself that night. The thought of the extraordinary crime I was about to commit, a burning curiosity to know whether Wimp would detect the modus operandi, the prospect of sharing the feelings of murderers with whom I had been in contact all my life, without being in touch with the terrible joys of their inner life. The fear lest I should be too fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drab-Dump's knock. All these things agitated me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning every detail of poor Constance's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on toward the misty dawn. I was wracked with suspense. Was I to be disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came, the rat-tat-tat of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. Come over and kill him. I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went across to 11 Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in which Arthur Constance lay sleeping, his head resting on my hands. I cried, my God, as if I saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood swam before Mrs. Drab-Dump's eyes. She cowered back. For an instant I divined rather than saw the action. She shut off the dreaded sight with her hands. In that instant I had made my cut. Precisely, scientifically, made so deep a cut and drawn out the weapon so sharply that there was scarce a drop of blood on it. Then there came from the throat a jet of blood which Mrs. Drab-Dump, conscious only of the horrid gash, saw but vaguely. I covered up the face quickly with a handkerchief to hide any convulsive distortion. But as the medical evidence, in this detail accurate, testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the razor and the empty, sulfonal file. With a woman like Mrs. Drab-Dump to watch me, I could do anything I pleased. I got hurt to draw my attention to the fact that both the windows were fastened. Some fool, by the way, thought there was a discrepancy in the evidence, because the police found only one window fastened. Forgetting that, in my innocence, I took care not to re-fasten the window I'd opened to call for aid. Naturally I did not call for aid before a considerable time had elapsed. There was Mrs. Drab-Dump to quiet and the excuse of making notes as an old hand. My object was to gain time. I wanted the body to be fairly cold and stiff before being discovered, though there was not much danger here, for as you saw by the medical evidence there's no telling the time of death to an hour or two. The frank way in which I said the death was very recent disarmed all suspicion and even Dr. Robinson was unconsciously worked upon in a judging the time of death by the knowledge. Queery here, Mr. Templeton, that it had preceded my advent on the scene. Before leaving Mrs. Drab-Dump there is just one point I should like to say a word about. You've listened so patiently, sir, to my lectures on the science of sciences that you will not refuse to hear the last. A good deal of importance has been attached to Mrs. Drab-Dump's oversleeping herself by half an hour. It happens that this, like the innocent fog which has been made responsible for much, is a purely accidental and irrelevant circumstance. In all works on inductive logic it is thoroughly recognised that only some of the circumstances of a phenomenon are of its essence and causally interconnected. There is always a certain proportion of heterogeneous accompaniments which have no intimate relation whatever with the phenomenon. Yet so crude as yet the comprehension of the science of evidence that every feature of the phenomenon under investigation is made equally important and sought to be linked with the chain of evidence to attempt to explain everything is always the mark of the Tyro. The fog and Mrs. Drab-Dump's oversleeping herself were mere accidents. There are always these irrelevant accompaniments and the true scientist allows for this element of, so to speak, chemically unrelated detail. Even I never counted on the unfortunate series of accidental phenomena which have led to Mortlake's implication in a network of suspicion. On the other hand, the fact that my servant Jane, who usually goes about ten, left a few minutes earlier on the night of December 3rd that she didn't know of Constance's visit was a relevant accident. In fact, just as the art of the artist or the editor consists largely in knowing what to leave out so does the art of the scientific detector of crime consist of knowing what details to ignore. In short, to explain everything is to explain too much and too much is worse than too little. To return to my experiment, my success succeeded my wildest dreams. None had an inkling of the truth. The insolubility of the big-bow murder teased the cutest minds in Europe and the civilized world that a man could have been murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savoured of the ages of magic. The redoubtable wimp who had been blazoned as my successor fell back on the theory of suicide. The mystery would have slept till my death, but I fear for my own ingenuity. I tried to stand outside myself and to look at the crime with the eyes of another or of my old self. I found the work of art so perfect as to leave only one sublimely simple solution. The very terms of the problem were so inconceivable that had I not been the murderer I should have suspected myself in conjunction of course with Mrs. Drabb-Dump. The first persons to enter the room would have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once in a disguised hand over the signature of one who looks through his own spectacles to the pale male press to suggest this. By associating myself thus with Mrs. Drabb-Dump I made it difficult for people to disassociate the two who entered the room together. To dash a half-truth in the world's eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether. This pseudonymous letter of mine I contradicted in my own name the next day. And in the course of the long letter which I was tempted to write I reduced fresh evidence against the theory of suicide. I was disgusted with the open verdict and wanted men to be up and doing and trying to find me out. I enjoyed the hunt more. Unfortunately Wimp, set on the chase again by my own letter by a dint of persistent blundering blundered onto a track which by a devilish tissue of coincidences I had neither foreseen nor dreamt of seemed to the world the true. Mortlake was arrested and condemned. Wimp had apparently crowned his reputation. This was too much. I had taken all this trouble merely to put a feather in Wimp's cap whereas I had expected to shake his reputation by it. It was bad enough that an innocent man should suffer but that Wimp should achieve a reputation he did not deserve and overshadow all of his predecessors by dint of a colossal mistake. This seemed to me intolerable. I have moved heaven and earth to get the verdict set aside and to save the prisoner. I have exposed the weakness of the evidence. I have had the world's search for the missing girl. I have petitioned and agitated in vain. I have failed. Now I play my last card. As the overweening Wimp could not be allowed to go down to posterity as the solver of this terrible mystery I decided that the condemned man might just as well profit by his exposure. That is the reason I make the exposure tonight before it is too late to save Malt Lake. So that is the reason, said the Home Secretary with a suspicion of mockery in his tones. The sole reason even as he spoke, a deeper roar than ever penetrated the study. I reprieve, hooray, hooray! The whole street seemed to rock with earthquake and the names of Grudman and Malt Lake to be thrown up in a fiery jet. I reprieve, I reprieve! And then the very windows rattled with cheers for the minister. And even above that rose the shrill voices of the newsboys. Reprieve of Malt Lake, Malt Lake reprieved! Grudman looked wanderingly across the street. How do they know? He murmured. Those evening papers are amazing, said the minister dryly. But I suppose they had everything ready in type for the contingency. He turned to his secretary. Templeton, have you got down every word of Mr. Grudman's confession? Every word, sir. Then bring in the cable you just received as Mr. Grudman entered the house. Templeton went back into the outer room and broke back the cable-gram that had been lying on the minister's writing-table when Grudman came in. The home secretary silently handed it to its visitor. It was from the chief of police of Melbourne announcing that Jesse Diamond had just arrived in that city in a sailing-vessel ignorant of all that had occurred and had immediately dispatched back to England having made a statement entirely corroborating the theory of the defence. Pending further inquiries into this, said the home secretary, not without appreciation of the grim humour of the situation, as he glanced at Grudman's ashen cheeks, I have reprieved the prisoner. Mr. Templeton was about to dispatch the messenger to the governor of Newgate as you entered this room. Mr. Wimps' card-castle would have tumbled to pieces without your assistance. Your still undiscoverable crime would have shaken his reputation as you intended. A sudden explosion shook the room and blinted with the cheers of the populace. Grudman had shot himself very scientifically in the heart. He fell at the home secretary's feet, stone-dead. Some of the working men who had been standing waiting by the shafts of the handsome helped to bear the stretcher. End of Chapter 12 and end of The Big Bow Mystery