III.

THE NEW JERSEY SPHINX

“A rather curious neighbourhood this, Jervis,” my friend Thorndyke remarked as we turned into Upper Bedford Place; “a sort of temporary aviary for cosmopolitan birds of passage, especially those of the Oriental variety. The Asiatic and African faces that one sees at the windows of these Bloomsbury boarding-houses almost suggest an overflow from the ethnographical galleries of the adjacent British Museum.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “there must be quite a considerable population of Africans, Japanese and Hindus in Bloomsbury; particularly Hindus.”

As I spoke, and as if in illustration of my statement, a dark-skinned man rushed out of one of the houses farther down the street and began to advance towards us in a rapid, bewildered fashion, stopping to look at each street door as he came to it. His hatless condition--though he was exceedingly well dressed--and his agitated manner immediately attracted my attention, and Thorndyke’s too, for the latter remarked, “Our friend seems to be in trouble. An accident, perhaps, or a case of sudden illness.”

Here the stranger, observing our approach, ran forward to meet us and asked in an agitated tone, “Can you tell me, please, where I can find a doctor?”

“I am a medical man,” replied Thorndyke, “and so is my friend.”

Our acquaintance grasped Thorndyke’s sleeve and exclaimed eagerly:

“Come with me, then, quickly if you please. A most dreadful thing has happened.”

He hurried us along at something between a trot and a quick walk, and as we proceeded he continued excitedly, “I am quite confused and terrified; it is all so strange and sudden and terrible.”

“Try,” said Thorndyke, “to calm yourself a little and tell us what has happened.”

“I will,” was the agitated reply. “It is my cousin, Dinanath Byramji--his surname is the same as mine. Just now I went to his room and was horrified to find him lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and blowing--like this,” and he puffed out his cheeks with a soft blowing noise. “I spoke to him and shook his hand, but he was like a dead man. This is the house.”

He darted up the steps to an open door at which a rather scared page-boy was on guard, and running along the hall, rapidly ascended the stairs. Following him closely, we reached a rather dark first-floor landing where, at a half-open door, a servant-maid stood listening with an expression of awe to a rhythmical snoring sound that issued from the room.

The unconscious man lay as Mr. Byramji had said, staring fixedly at the ceiling with wide-open, glazy eyes, puffing out his cheeks slightly at each breath. But the breathing was shallow and slow, and it grew perceptibly slower, with lengthening pauses. And even as I was timing it with my watch while Thorndyke examined the pupils with the aid of a wax match, it stopped. I laid my finger on the wrist and caught one or two slow, flickering beats. Then the pulse stopped too.

“He is gone,” said I. “He must have burst one of the large arteries.”

“Apparently,” said Thorndyke, “though one would not have expected it at his age. But wait! What is this?”

He pointed to the right ear, in the hollow of which a few drops of blood had collected, and as he spoke he drew his hand gently over the dead man’s head and moved it slightly from side to side.

“There is a fracture of the base of the skull,” said he, “and quite distinct signs of contusion of the scalp.” He turned to Mr. Byramji, who stood wringing his hands and gazing incredulously at the dead man, and asked:

“Can you throw any light on this?”

The Indian looked at him vacantly. The sudden tragedy seemed to have paralyzed his brain. “I don’t understand,” said he. “What does it mean?”

“It means,” replied Thorndyke, “that he has received a heavy blow on the head.”

For a few moments Mr. Byramji continued to stare vacantly at my colleague. Then he seemed suddenly to realize the import of Thorndyke’s reply, for he started up excitedly and turned to the door, outside which the two servants were hovering.

“Where is the person gone who came in with my cousin?” he demanded.

“You saw him go out, Albert,” said the maid. “Tell Mr. Byramji where he went to.”

The page tiptoed into the room with a fearful eye fixed on the corpse, and replied falteringly, “I only see the back of him as he went out, and all I know is that he turned to the left. P’raps he’s gone for a doctor.”

“Can you give us any description of him?” asked Thorndyke.

“I only see the back of him,” repeated the page. “He was a shortish gentleman and he had on a dark suit of clothes and a hard felt hat. That’s all I know.”

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “We may want to ask you some more questions presently,” and having conducted the page to the door, he shut it and turned to Mr. Byramji.

“Have you any idea who it was that was with your cousin?” he asked.

“None at all,” was the reply. “I was sitting in my room opposite, writing, when I heard my cousin come up the stairs with another person, to whom he was talking. I could not hear what he was saying. They went into his room--this room--and I could occasionally catch the sound of their voices. In about a quarter of an hour I heard the door open and shut, and then some one went downstairs, softly and rather quickly. I finished the letter that I was writing, and when I had addressed it I came in here to ask my cousin who the visitor was. I thought it might be some one who had come to negotiate for the ruby.”

“The ruby!” exclaimed Thorndyke. “What ruby do you refer to?”

“The great ruby,” replied Byramji. “But of course you have not----” He broke off suddenly and stood for a few moments staring at Thorndyke with parted lips and wide-open eyes; then abruptly he turned, and kneeling beside the dead man he began, in a curious, caressing, half-apologetic manner, first to pass his hand gently over the body at the waist and then to unfasten the clothes. This brought into view a handsome, soft leather belt, evidently of native workmanship, worn next to the skin and furnished with three pockets. Mr. Byramji unbuttoned and explored them in quick succession, and it was evident that they were all empty.

“It is gone!” he exclaimed in low, intense tones. “Gone! Ah! But how little would it signify! But thou, dear Dinanath, my brother, my friend, thou art gone, too!”

He lifted the dead man’s hand and pressed it to his cheek, murmuring endearments in his own tongue. Presently he laid it down reverently, and sprang up, and I was startled at the change in his aspect. The delicate, gentle, refined face had suddenly become the face of a Fury--fierce, sinister, vindictive.

“This wretch must die!” he exclaimed huskily. “This sordid brute who, without compunction, has crushed out a precious life as one would carelessly crush a fly, for the sake of a paltry crystal--he must die, if I have to follow him and strangle him with my own hands!”

Thorndyke laid his hand on Byramji’s shoulder. “I sympathize with you most cordially,” said he. “If it is as you think, and appearances suggest, that your cousin has been murdered as a mere incident of robbery, the murderer’s life is forfeit, and Justice cries aloud for retribution. The fact of murder will be determined, for or against, by a proper inquiry. Meanwhile we have to ascertain who this unknown man is and what happened while he was with your cousin.”

Byramji made a gesture of despair. “But the man has disappeared, and nobody has seen him! What can we do?”

“Let us look around us,” replied Thorndyke, “and see if we can judge what has happened in this room. What, for instance, is this?”

He picked up from a corner near the door a small leather object, which he handed to Mr. Byramji. The Indian seized it eagerly, exclaiming:

“Ah! It is the little bag in which my cousin used to carry the ruby. So he had taken it from his belt.”

“It hasn’t been dropped, by any chance?” I suggested.

In an instant Mr. Byramji was down on his knees, peering and groping about the floor, and Thorndyke and I joined in the search. But, as might have been expected, there was no sign of the ruby, nor, indeed, of anything else, excepting a hat which I picked up from under the table.

“No,” said Mr. Byramji, rising with a dejected air. “It is gone--of course it is gone, and the murderous villain----”

Here his glance fell on the hat, which I had laid on the table, and he bent forward to look at it.

“Whose hat is this?” he demanded, glancing at the chair on which Thorndyke’s hat and mine had been placed.

“Is it not your cousin’s?” asked Thorndyke.

“No, certainly not. His hat was like mine--we bought them both together. It had a white silk lining with his initials, D.B., in gold. This has no lining and is a much older hat. It must be the murderer’s hat.”

“If it is,” said Thorndyke, “that is a most important fact--important in two respects. Could you let us see your hat?”

“Certainly,” replied Byramji, walking quickly, but with a soft tread, to the door. As he went out, shutting the door silently behind him, Thorndyke picked up the derelict hat and swiftly tried it on the head of the dead man. As far as I could judge, it appeared to fit, and this Thorndyke confirmed as he replaced it on the table.

“As you see,” said he, “it is at least a practicable fit, which is a fact of some significance.”

Here Mr. Byramji returned with his own hat, which he placed on the table by the side of the other, and thus placed, crown uppermost, the two hats were closely similar. Both were black, hard felts of the prevalent “bowler” shape, and of good quality, and the difference in their age and state of preservation was not striking; but when Byramji turned them over and exhibited their interiors it was seen that whereas the strange hat was unlined save for the leather headband, Byramji’s had a white silk lining and bore the owner’s initials in embossed gilt letters.

“What happened,” said Thorndyke, when he had carefully compared the two hats, “seems fairly obvious. The two men, on entering, placed their hats crown upwards on the table. In some way--perhaps during a struggle--the visitor’s hat was knocked down and rolled under the table. Then the stranger, on leaving, picked up the only visible hat--almost identically similar to his own--and put it on.”

“Is it not rather singular,” I asked, “that he should not have noticed the different feel of a strange hat?”

“I think not,” Thorndyke replied. “If he noticed anything unusual he would probably assume that he had put it on the wrong way round. Remember that he would be extremely hurried and agitated. And when once he had left the house he would not dare to take the risk of returning, though he would doubtless realize the gravity of the mistake. And now,” he continued, “would you mind giving us a few particulars? You have spoken of a great ruby, which your cousin had, and which seems to be missing.”

“Yes. You shall come to my room and I will tell you about it; but first let us lay my poor cousin decently on his bed.”

“I think,” said Thorndyke, “the body ought not to be moved until the police have seen it.”

“Perhaps you are right,” Byramji agreed reluctantly, “though it seems callous to leave him lying there.” With a sigh he turned to the door, and Thorndyke followed, carrying the two hats.

“My cousin and I,” said our host, when we were seated in his own large bed-sitting room, “were both interested in gem-stones. I deal in all kinds of stones that are found in the East, but Dinanath dealt almost exclusively in rubies. He was a very fine judge of those beautiful gems, and he used to make periodical tours in Burma in search of uncut rubies of unusual size or quality. About four months ago he acquired at Mogok, in Upper Burma, a magnificent specimen over twenty-eight carats in weight, perfectly flawless and of the most gorgeous colour. It had been roughly cut, but my cousin was intending to have it recut unless he should receive an advantageous offer for it in the meantime.”

“What would be the value of such a stone?” I asked.

“It is impossible to say. A really fine large ruby of perfect colour is far, far more valuable than the finest diamond of the same size. It is the most precious of all gems, with the possible exception of the emerald. A fine ruby of five carats is worth about three thousand pounds, but, of course, the value rises out of all proportion with increasing size. Fifty thousand pounds would be a moderate price for Dinanath’s ruby.”

During this recital I noticed that Thorndyke, while listening attentively, was turning the stranger’s hat over in his hands, narrowly scrutinizing it both inside and outside. As Byramji concluded, he remarked:

“We shall have to let the police know what has happened, but, as my friend and I will be called as witnesses, I should like to examine this hat a little more closely before you hand it over to them. Could you let me have a small, hard brush? A dry nail-brush would do.”

Our host complied readily--in fact eagerly. Thorndyke’s authoritative, purposeful manner had clearly impressed him, for he said as he handed my colleague a new nail-brush: “I thank you for your help and value it. We must not depend on the police only.”

Accustomed as I was to Thorndyke’s methods, his procedure was not unexpected, but Mr. Byramji watched him with breathless interest and no little surprise as, laying a sheet of note-paper on the table, he brought the hat close to it and brushed firmly but slowly, so that the dust dislodged should fall on it. As it was not a very well-kept hat, the yield was considerable, especially when the brush was drawn under the curl of the brim, and very soon the paper held quite a little heap. Then Thorndyke folded the paper into a small packet and having written “outside” on it, put it in his pocket-book.

“Why do you do that?” Mr. Byramji asked. “What will the dust tell you?”

“Probably nothing,” Thorndyke replied. “But this hat is our only direct clue to the identity of the man who was with your cousin, and we must make the most of it. Dust, you know, is only a mass of fragments detached from surrounding objects. If the objects are unusual the dust may be quite distinctive. You could easily identify the hat of a miller or a cement worker.” As he was speaking he reversed the hat and turned down the leather head-lining, whereupon a number of strips of folded paper fell down into the crown.

“Ah!” exclaimed Byramji, “perhaps we shall learn something now.”

He picked out the folded slips and began eagerly to open them out, and we examined them systematically, one by one. But they were singularly disappointing and uninforming. Mostly they consisted of strips of newspaper, with one or two circulars, a leaf from a price list of gas stoves, a portion of a large envelope on which were the remains of an address which read “--n--don, W.C.,” and a piece of paper, evidently cut down vertically and bearing the right-hand half of some kind of list. This read:

“--el 3 oz. 5 dwts. --eep 9½ oz.”

“Can you make anything of this?” I asked, handing the paper to Thorndyke.

He looked at it reflectively, and answered, as he copied it into his notebook: “It has, at least, some character. If we consider it with the other data we should get some sort of hint from it. But these scraps of paper don’t tell us much. Perhaps their most suggestive feature is their quantity and the way in which, as you have no doubt noticed, they were arranged at the sides of the hat. We had better replace them as we found them for the benefit of the police.”

The nature of the suggestion to which he referred was not very obvious to me, but the presence of Mr. Byramji rendered discussion inadvisable; nor was there any opportunity, for we had hardly reconstituted the hat when we became aware of a number of persons ascending the stairs, and then we heard the sound of rather peremptory rapping at the door of the dead man’s room.

Mr. Byramji opened the door and went out on to the landing, where several persons had collected, including the two servants and a constable.

“I understand,” said the policeman, “that there is something wrong here. Is that so?”

“A very terrible thing has happened,” replied Byramji. “But the doctors can tell you better than I can.” Here he looked appealingly at Thorndyke, and we both went out and joined him.

“A gentleman--Mr. Dinanath Byramji--has met with his death under somewhat suspicious circumstances,” said Thorndyke, and, glancing at the knot of naturally curious persons on the landing, he continued: “If you will come into the room where the death occurred, I will give you the facts so far as they are known to us.”

With this he opened the door and entered the room with Mr. Byramji, the constable, and me. As the door opened, the bystanders craned forward and a middle-aged woman uttered a cry of horror and followed us into the room.

“This is dreadful!” she exclaimed, with a shuddering glance at the corpse. “The servants told me about it when I came in just now and I sent Albert for the police at once. But what does it mean? You don’t think poor Mr. Dinanath has been murdered?”

“We had better get the facts, ma’am,” said the constable, drawing out a large black notebook and laying his helmet on the table. He turned to Mr. Byramji, who had sunk into a chair and sat, the picture of grief, gazing at his dead cousin. “Would you kindly tell me what you know about how it happened?”

Byramji repeated the substance of what he had told us, and when the constable had taken down his statement, Thorndyke and I gave the few medical particulars that we could furnish and handed the constable our cards. Then, having helped to lay the corpse on the bed and cover it with a sheet, we turned to take our leave.

“You have been very kind,” Mr. Byramji said as he shook our hands warmly. “I am more than grateful. Perhaps I may be permitted to call on you and hear if--if you have learned anything fresh,” he concluded discreetly.

“We shall be pleased to see you,” Thorndyke replied, “and to give you any help that we can”; and with this we took our departure, watched inquisitively down the stairs by the boarders and the servants who still lurked in the vicinity of the chamber of death.

“If the police have no more information than we have,” I remarked as we walked homeward, “they won’t have much to go on.”

“No,” said Thorndyke. “But you must remember that this crime--as we are justified in assuming it to be--is not an isolated one. It is the fourth of practically the same kind within the last six months. I understand that the police have some kind of information respecting the presumed criminal, though it can’t be worth much, seeing that no arrest has been made. But there is some new evidence this time. The exchange of hats may help the police considerably.”

“In what way? What evidence does it furnish?”

“In the first place it suggests a hurried departure, which seems to connect the missing man with the crime. Then, he is wearing the dead man’s hat, and though he is not likely to continue wearing it, it may be seen and furnish a clue. We know that that hat fits him fairly and we know its size, so that we know the size of his head. Finally, we have the man’s own hat.”

“I don’t fancy the police will get much information from that,” said