Jacob Burrell sat in his comfortable armchair and took counsel with himself. He was a bachelor, and like many other bachelors was wedded to a hobby, which in some respects was more to him than any wife could possibly have been. In other words he was an enthusiastic philatelist, and his collection of the world’s stamps was the envy of every enthusiast who came in contact with them. For Jacob Burrell they possessed another interest that was quite apart from their mere intrinsic value. A very large number of the stamps so carefully pasted in the book had been collected, or had come into his possession, in the performance of his professional duties. A very rare 1? schilling blue Hamburg was picked up by the merest chance on the same day that he ran a notorious bank swindler to earth in Berlin; while a certain blue and brown United States, worth upward of thirty pounds, became his property during a memorable trip to America in search of a fraudulent trustee, whose whereabouts the officials of Scotland Yard had not been able to discover. Well-nigh every page had a story of its own to tell, and when Burrell was in the humour, he could, with the book before him, reel off tale after tale, of a description that would be calculated to make the listener’s hair stand on end with astonishment. At the present moment he was occupied, as he very well knew, with one of the most knotty problems he had ever tackled in his life. His face wore a puzzled expression. In his right hand he held a large magnifying glass and in his left a Canadian stamp of the year 1852. But whether it was the case he was thinking of or the stamp it would have been difficult to say.
“Genuine or not?” he asked himself. “That’s the question. If it’s the first, it’s worth five pounds of any man’s money. If it’s a fudge, then it’s not the first time I’ve been had, but I’ll take very good care that, so far as the gentleman is concerned who sold it to me, it shall be the last.”
He scrutinized it carefully once more through the glass and then shook his head. Having done so he replaced the doubtful article in the envelope whence, he had taken it, slipped the glass back into its chamois-leather case, tied the tape round the handle as deliberately as if all his success in life depended on it, put both book and glass away in a drawer, and then proceeding to the sideboard on the other side of the room, slowly and carefully mixed himself a glass of grog. It was close upon midnight and he felt that the work he had that day completed entitled him to such refreshment.
“Good Heavens,” he muttered as he sipped it, “what fools some men can be!”
What this remark had to do with the stamp in question was not apparent, but his next soliloquy made his meaning somewhat more intelligible.
“If he had wanted to find himself in the dock and to put the rope round his neck he couldn’t have gone to work better. He must needs stand talking to the girl in the Strand until she cries, whereupon he calls a cab and drives home with her, gets out of it and takes up a position in the full light of a gas lamp, so that the first policeman who passes may have a look at his face, and recognise him again when the proper time comes. After that he hurries back to his hotel at such a pace that he arrives in a sufficiently agitated condition to stand in need of brandy. Why, it’s an almost unbelievable list of absurd coincidences. However, he didn’t commit the crime, that’s quite certain. I’ve had a bit of experience in my time, and I don’t know that I’ve ever made a mistake about a human face yet. There’s not a trace of guilt in his. To-morrow morning I’ll just run round to the scene of the murder and begin my investigations there. Though the Pro’s have been over the ground before me, it will be strange if I can not pick up something that has not been noticed by their observant eyes.”
A perpetual feud existed between the famous Jacob Burrell and the genuine representatives of the profession. His ways were unorthodox, the latter declared. He did not follow the accustomed routine, and what was worse, when he managed to obtain information it was almost, if not quite, impossible to get him to divulge it for their benefit. Such a man deserved to be set down on every possible opportunity.
True to the arrangement he had made with himself on the previous evening, Burrell immediately after breakfast next morning set out for Burford Street. On reaching No. 16 he ascended the steps and entered the grimy passage, and inquired from a man he found there where the landlord was to be discovered. In reply the individual he interrogated went to the head of a flight of stairs that descended like an abyss into the regions below, and shouted something in German. A few moments later the proprietor of the establishment made his appearance. He was a small sallow individual with small bloodshot eyes, suggestive of an undue partiality for Schnapps, and the sadness of whose face gave one the impression that he cherished a grievance against the whole world. His sleeves were rolled up above the elbows, and he carried a knife in one hand and a potato in the other.
“Vat is dat you vant mit me?” he inquired irritably, as he took stock of the person before him.
“I want you to show me the room in which that Italian girl, Teresina Cardi, was murdered,” Burrell replied, without wasting time.
The landlord swore a deep oath in German.
“It is always de murder from morning until night,” he answered. “I am sick mit it. Dat murder will be the ruin mit me. Every day der is somebody come and say ‘Where is dot room?’ Who are you that you ask me that I should to you show it?”
Burrell, to the best of his ability, explained his motive for proffering such a request. This must have been satisfactory, for in the end the landlord consented to conduct him to the room in question. From the day of the murder it had been kept locked, and it must be confessed that since no one would inhabit it, and it did not in consequence return its owner its accustomed rent, he had some measure of excuse for the irritation he displayed in connection with it.
“Dere it is,” he said, throwing the door open, “and you can look your full at it. I have scrubbed all dot floor dill my arms ache mit it, but I can not get der blood marks out. Dot stain is just where she was found, boor girl!”
The man pointed, with grizly relish, to a dark stain upon the floor, and then went on to describe the impression the murder and its attendant incidents had produced upon him. To any other man than Burrell, they would probably have been uninteresting to a degree. The latter, however, knowing the importance of little things, allowed him to continue his chatter. At the same time his quick eyes were taking in the character of the room, making his own deductions and drawing his own inferences. At last, when the other had exhausted his powers of description, Burrell took from his pocket his favourite magnifying glass, cased in its covering of chamois leather. Having prepared it for business, he went down on his hands and knees and searched the floor minutely. What he was looking for, or what he hoped to find, he did not know himself, but a life’s experience had taught him that clews are often picked up in the most unexpected quarters.
“I’ve known a man get himself hanged,” he had once been heard to remark, “simply because he neglected to put a stitch to a shirt button and had afterward to borrow a needle and thread to do it. I remember another who had the misfortune to receive a sentence of fifteen years for forgery, who would never have been captured, but for a peculiar blend of tobacco, which he would persist in smoking after the doctors had told him it was injurious to his health.”
So slow and so careful was his investigation, that the landlord, who preferred more talkative company, very soon tired of watching him. Bidding him lock the door and bring the key downstairs with him when he had finished, he returned to the culinary operations from which he had been summoned. Burrell, however, still remained upon his knees on the floor, searching every crack and crevice with that superb and never-wearying patience that was one of his most remarkable characteristics. It was quite certain, as the landlord had said, that the floor had been most thoroughly and conscientiously scrubbed since the night of the murder. He rose to his feet and brushed his knees.
“Nothing there,” he said to himself. “They’ve destroyed any chance of my finding anything useful.”
Walking to the fireplace he made a most careful examination of the grate. Like the floor, it had also been rigorously cleaned. Not a vestige of ash or dust remained in it.
“Polished up to be ready for the newspaper reporters, I suppose,” said Burrell sarcastically to himself. “They couldn’t have done it better if they had wanted to make sure of the murderer not being caught.”
After that he strolled to the window and looked out. The room, as has already been stated elsewhere, was only a garret, and the small window opened upon a slope of tiled roof. Above the eaves and at the bottom of the slope just mentioned, was a narrow lead gutter of the usual description. From the window it was impossible, unless one leaned well out, to look down into the street below.
“Just let me think for a moment,” said Burrell to himself, as he stood looking at the roofs of the houses opposite; “the night of the murder was a warm one, and this window would almost certainly be open. I suppose if the people in the houses on the other side of the way had seen or heard anything, they would have been sure to come forward before now. The idea, however, is always worth trying. I’ve a good mind to make a few inquiries over there later on.”
As he said this he gave a little start forward, and leaning out of the window, looked down over the tiles into the gutter below. A small fragment of a well-smoked cigarette could just be descried in it.
“My luck again,” he said with a chuckle. “If some reporter or sensation hunter didn’t throw it there, which is scarcely likely, I may be on the right track after all. Now who could have been smoking cigarettes up here? First and foremost I’ll have a look at it.”
On entering, he had placed his walking stick on the table in the middle of the room. He turned to get it, and as he did so he took from his pocket a small housewife. His multitudinous experiences had taught him the advisability of carrying such an article about with him, and on this occasion it promised to prove more than ordinarily useful. From one compartment he selected a long, stout needle which he placed in a hole in the handle of the walking stick. Then returning once more to the window, and leaning well out, he probed for the cigarette lying so snugly five or six feet below him. Twice he was unsuccessful, but the third attempt brought the precious relic to his hand. Taking it to the table, he drew up a chair and sat down to examine it. It was sodden and discoloured, but the rim of the gutter had in a measure protected it, and it still held together. His famous magnifying glass was again brought into action. Once upon a time there had been printing on the paper, but now it was well-nigh undecipherable. As I have already remarked, however, Burrell was a man gifted with rare patience, and after a scrutiny that lasted some minutes, he was able to make out sufficient of the printing to know that the maker’s name ended with “olous,” while the place in which the cigarette had been manufactured was Cairo.
“I wonder,” said the detective to himself, “if this is destined to be of any service to me. At first glance it would appear as if my first impression was a wrong one. Mr. Henderson, who is accused of the murder, has lately returned from Cairo. Though, perhaps he never purchased any tobacco there, it would certainly do him no good to have it produced as evidence, that the butt end of a cigarette from that place was found in the gutter outside the window of the murdered woman’s room.”
After another prolonged inspection of the room, and not until he had quite convinced himself that there was nothing more to be discovered in it, he descended to the lower regions of the house, returned the key to the landlord, and immediately left the building. Crossing the street, he made his way to the house opposite. The caretaker received him, and inquired the nature of his business. He gave his explanation, but a few questions were sufficient to convince him that he must not expect to receive any assistance from that quarter. The rooms, so he discovered, from which it would have been possible to catch any glimpse of what was going on in Teresina’s apartment in the opposite house, were tenanted only in the daytime.
“Nothing to be learned there,” said Burrell to himself, when he had thanked the man and had left the house. “Now the question to be decided is, what shall I do next?”
He stood upon the pavement meditatively scratching his chin for a few moments. Then he must have made up his mind, for he turned sharply round and walked off in the direction of the Tottenham Court Road. Taking a ‘bus there, he made his way on it to Oxford Street, thence, having changed conveyances, he proceeded as far as Regent Street. It was a bright, sunny morning, and the pavements of that fashionable thoroughfare were crowded with pedestrians. As the burly, farmerish-looking man strode along, few, if any, of the people he passed would have believed him to be the great detective whose name had struck a terror, that nothing else could have inspired, into the hearts of so many hardened criminals. When he was a little more than half-way down the street, he turned sharply to his left hand, passed into another and shorter thoroughfare, then turned to his left again, and finally entered another street on his right. He was now in the neighbourhood of quiet-looking houses of the office description. There was nothing about them to indicate that their occupants were the possessors of any great amount of wealth, and yet one could not help feeling, as one looked at them, that there was a substantial, money-making air about them. Having reached a particular doorway, Burrell paused, consulted the names engraved upon the brass plate on the wall outside, and then entered. He found himself in a small hall, from which a narrow flight of linoleum-covered stairs led to the floors above. These stairs he ascended, to presently find himself standing before a door on which the names of Messrs. Morris and Zevenboom were painted. Disregarding the word “Private,” which for some inexplicable reason was printed underneath the name of the firm, he turned the handle and entered. A small youth was seated at a table in the centre of the apartment, busily engaged making entries in a large book propped up before him. He looked up on seeing Burrell, and, in an off-hand fashion, inquired his business.
“I want to see Mr. Zevenboom if he’s at home,” said the latter. “If he is, just tell him, my lad, that I should like to speak to him, will you?”
“That’s all very well,” said the boy with an assurance beyond his years, “but how am I to do it if I don’t know your name? Ain’t a thought reader, am I?”
“Tell him Mr. Burrell would like to speak to him,” said the detective without any appearance of displeasure at the lad’s impertinence. “I fancy he will know who I am, even if you don’t!”
“Right you are, I’ll be back in a moment.”
So saying, the lad disappeared into an inner apartment with an air that seemed to insinuate that if Mr. Zevenboom might be impressed by the stranger, it was certainly more than he was. His feelings received rather a shock, however, when his employer informed him in a stage whisper that Mr. Burrell ”was the great detective“ and made him show him in at once and not keep him waiting. Jacob was accordingly ushered in, with becoming ceremony, and found himself received by a little man, whose beady black eyes and sharp features proclaimed his nationality more plainly than any words could have done.
“Ah, mein dear friend,” said he, “I am glad to see you. It is long sinc............