THE air of finality with which Thorndyke had, so to speak, handed the baby back to Inspector Blandy might have been deceptive; but I don’t think it even deceived the inspector. Certainly it did not deceive me. Never had I known Thorndyke to resign from an unsolved problem, and I felt pretty certain that he was at least keeping this particular problem in view, and, in his queer, secretive way, trying over the various possible solutions in his mind.
This being so, I made no pretence of having dismissed the case, but took every opportunity of discussing it, not only with Thorndyke but especially with Polton, who was the actual fountain of information. And there were, about this time, abundant opportunities for discussion, for we were still engaged, in our spare time, in the great work of rearranging and weeding out our large collection of microscopical slides for which Polton had recently made a new set of cabinets. Naturally, that artist assisted us in sorting out the specimens, and it was in the intervals of these activities that I endeavoured to fill in the blanks of my knowledge of the case.
“I have been thinking,” I remarked on one of these occasions, “of what you told us, Polton, about that clock of Mr. Haire’s. You are of opinion that it is actually the clock to which you fitted the calendar for Mr. Parrish. I don’t know that it is a point of any importance, but I should like to know what convinces you that this is the identical clock, and not one which might have been copied from yours, or invented independently.”
“My principal reason for believing that it is the same clock is that it is made from the same kind of oddments of material that I used. For instance, I made the pallet-bar from an old hack-saw blade which I happened to have by me. It was not specially suitable, and an ordinary clock-maker would almost certainly have used a strip of brass. But the pallet-bar of this clock has been made from a hack-saw blade.”
He paused and seemed to reflect for a while. Then he continued: “But there is another point; and the more I have thought about it the more it has impressed me. Mr. Parrish had a nephew who lived with him and worked as a pupil in the workshop; a lad of about my own age or a little younger. Now this lad’s name was Haire, and he was always called Gus. I supposed at the time that Gus stood for Augustus, but when I heard at the inquest the name of Gustavus Haire, I wondered if it might happen to be the same person. You can’t judge by a mere similarity of names, since there are so many people of the same name. But when I saw this clock, I thought at once of Gus Haire. For he was in the workshop when I made the calendar, and he watched me as I was working on it and got me to explain all about it; though the principle on which it worked was obvious enough to any mechanic.”
“Should you describe Gus Haire as a mechanic?” I asked.
“Yes, of a sort,” Polton replied. “He was a poor workman, but he was equal to a simple job like the making of this calendar, especially when he had been shown; and certainly to the addition that had been made to it.”
“And what sort of fellow was he — morally, I mean?” Polton took time to consider this question. At length he replied: “It is not for me to judge any man’s character, and I didn’t know very much about him. But I do know this as a fact: that on a certain occasion when I was making a new key for Mr. Parrish’s cash drawer to replace one which was broken, Gus pinched a piece of my moulding wax and took a squeeze of the broken key; and that, later, Mr. Parrish accused me of having opened that drawer with a false key and taken money from it. Now, I don’t know that Gus made a false key and I don’t know that any money was actually stolen; but when a man takes a squeeze of the key of another man’s cash drawer, he lays himself open to a reasonable suspicion of an unlawful intention.”
“Yes, indeed,” said I. “A decidedly fishy proceeding; and from what you have just told us, it looks as if you were right — as if the clock were the original clock and Mr. Gustavus Haire the original Gus, though it is not quite clear how Mr. Parrish’s clock came into his possession.”
I don’t think, sir,” said he, “that it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Parrish was his uncle, and, as he was an old man even then, he must be dead long since. The clock must have gone to someone, and why not to his nephew?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that is reasonable enough. However, we don’t know for certain, and, after all, I don’t see that the identity of either the clock or the man is of much importance. What do you think, Thorndyke?”
My colleague removed his eye from the microscope, and, laying the slide in its tray, considered the question. At length he replied: “The importance of the point depends on how much Polton remembers. Blandy’s difficulty at the moment is that he has no description of Gustavus Haire sufficiently definite for purposes of identification. Now, can we supply that deficiency? What do you say, Polton? Do you think that if you were to meet Gus Haire after all these years you would recognize him?”
“I think I should, sir,” was the reply. And then he added as an afterthought: “I certainly should if he hadn’t lost his teeth.”
“His teeth!” I exclaimed. “Was there anything very distinctive about his teeth?”
“Distinctive isn’t the word, sir,” he replied. “They were most extraordinary teeth. I have never seen anything like them. They looked as if they were made of tortoiseshell.”
“You don’t mean that they were decayed?”
“Lord, no, sir. They were sound enough; good strong teeth and rather large. But they were such a queer colour. All mottled over with brown spots. And those spots wouldn’t come off. He tried all sorts of things to get rid of them — Armenian bole, charcoal, even jeweller’s red stuff — but it was no use. Nothing would shift those spots.”
“Well,” I said, “if those teeth are still extant, they would be a godsend to Blandy, for a written description would enable a stranger to identify the man.”
“I doubt if it would, sir,” Polton remarked with a significant smile. “Gus was extremely sensitive about those teeth, and showed them as little as possible when he talked or smiled. In those days he couldn’t produce much in the way of a moustache, but I expect he does now, and I’ll warrant he doesn’t crop it too close.”
“That is so,” Thorndyke confirmed. “The only description of Haire that the police have, as I understand, is that given by Mr. Green and that of the man who interviewed Haire in Dublin. Green’s description is very vague and sketchy, while the Dublin man hardly remembered him at all except by name, and that only because he had kept the card which Haire had presented. But both of these men mentioned that Haire wore a full, drooping moustache.”
Still,” I persisted, “the teeth are a very distinctive feature, and it would seem only fair to Blandy to give him the information.”
“Perhaps it might be as well,” Thorndyke agreed. Then, returning to the subject of Polton’s old acquaintance, he asked: “You say that Gus lived with his uncle. Why was that? Was he an orphan?”
“Oh, no, sir. Only his people lived in the country, not very far away, for he used to go down and stay with them occasionally at week-ends. It was somewhere in Essex. I have forgotten the name of the place, but it was a small town near the river.”
“It wouldn’t be Maldon?” Thorndyke suggested.
“That’s the place, sir. Yes, I remember now.” He stopped suddenly and, gazing at his principal with an expression of astonishment, exclaimed: “Now, I wonder, sir, how you knew that he lived at Maldon.”
Thorndyke chuckled. “But, my dear Polton, I didn’t know. I was only making a suggestion. Maldon happens to agree with your description.”
Polton shook his head and crinkled sceptically. “It isn’t the only waterside town in Essex,” he remarked, and added: “No, sir. It’s my belief that you knew that he lived at Maldon, though how you knew I can’t imagine.”
I was disposed to agree with Polton. There was something a little suspicious in the way in which Thorndyke had dropped pat on the right place. But further questions on my part elicited nothing but an exasperating grin and the advice to me to turn the problem over in my mind and consider any peculiarities that distinguished Maldon from other Essex towns; advice that I acted upon at intervals during the next few days with disappointingly negative results.
Nevertheless, Polton’s conviction turned out to be justified. I realized it when, one morning about a week later, I found Polton laying the breakfast-table and placing the “catch” from the letter-box beside our respective plates. As I entered the room, he looked at me with a most portentous crinkle and pointed mysteriously to a small package which he had just deposited by my colleague’s plate. I stooped over it to examine the typewritten address, but at first failed to discover anything significant about it; then, suddenly, my eye caught the postmark, and I understood. That package had been posted at Maldon.
“The Doctor is a most tantalizing person, sir,” Polton exclaimed. “I don’t mind admitting that I am bursting with curiosity as to what is in that package. But I suppose we shall find out presently.”
Once more he was right; in fact, the revelation came that very evening. We were working our way through the great collection of test specimens, examining and discussing each slide, when Thorndyke looked up from the microscope and electrified Polton and me by saying:
“By the way, I have got a specimen of another kind that I should like to take your opinion on. I’ll show it to you.”
He rose and stepped across the room to a cabinet, from which he took a small cardboard box of the kind that dentists use for the packing of dental plates. Opening this, he took from it the wax model of an upper denture, complete with teeth, and laid it on the table.
There was a moment’s silence as we both gazed at it in astonishment and Thorndyke regarded us with a quizzical smile. Then Polton, whose eyes seemed ready to drop out, exclaimed:
“God bless my soul! Why, they are Mr. Haire’s teeth!”
Thorndyke nodded. “Good!” said he. “You recognize these teeth as being similar to those of Gus Haire?
“They aren’t similar,” said Polton; “they are identically the same. Of course, I know that they can’t actually be his teeth, but they are absolutely the same in appearance: the same white, chalky patches, the same brown stains, and the same little blackish-brown specks. I recognized them in a moment, and I have never seen anything like them before or since. Now, I wonder how you got hold of them.”
“Yes,” said I, “that is what I have been wondering. Perhaps the time has come for the explanation of the mystery.”
“There is not much mystery,” he replied. “These teeth are examples of the rare and curious condition known as “mottled teeth”; of which perhaps the most striking feature is the very local distribution. It is known in many different places, and has been studied very thoroughly in the United States, but wherever it is met with it is confined to a quite small area, though within that area it affects a very large proportion of the inhabitants; so large that it is almost universal. Now, in this country, the most typically endemic area is Maldon; and, naturally, when Polton described Gus Haire’s teeth and told us that Gus was a native of Essex, I thought at once of Maldon.”
“I wonder, sir,” said Polton, “what there is about Maldon that affects people’s teeth in this way. Has it been explained?”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “It has been found that wherever mottled teeth occur, the water from springs and wells contains an abnormal amount of fluorine, and the quantity of the fluorine seems to be directly related to the intensity of the mottling. Mr. Ainsworth, whose admirable paper in the British Dental Journal is the source of my information on the subject, collected samples of water from various localities in Essex and analysis of these confirmed the findings of the other investigators............