CHAPTER XIII

In Which the Medico-legal Worm Arrives

Romance lurks in unsuspected places. As we go our daily round, we are apt to look distastefully upon the scenes made dull by familiarity, and to seek distraction by letting our thoughts ramble far away into time and space, to ages and regions in which life seems more full of colour. In fancy, perchance, we thread the ghostly aisles of some tropical forest, or linger on the white beach of some lonely coral island, where the cocoanut palms, shivering in the sea-breeze, patter a refrain to the song of the surf; or we wander by moonlight through the narrow streets of some southern city and hear the thrum of the guitar rise to the shrouded balcony; and behold! all the time Romance is at our very doors.

It was on a bright afternoon early in March that Thorndyke sat with Phillip Rodney by his side on one of the lower benches of the lecture theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons. Not a likely place, this, to encounter Romance. Yet there it was—and Tragedy, too—lying unnoticed at present on the green baize cover of the lecturer’s table, its very existence unsuspected.

Meanwhile Thorndyke and Phillip conversed in quiet undertones, for it still wanted some minutes to the hour at which the lecture would commence.

“I suppose,” said Phillip, “you have had no report from that private detective fellow—I forget his name?”

“Bagwell. No, excepting the usual weekly note stating that he is still unable to pick up any trace of Purcell.”

“Ah,” commented Phillip; “that doesn’t sound encouraging. Must be costing a lot of money, too. I fancy my brother and Maggie Purcell are both beginning to wish they had taken your advice and relied on the letter by itself. But Jack was overborne by Barnby’s insistence on corroborative evidence, and Maggie let him decide. And now they are sorry they listened to Barnby. They hadn’t bargained for all this delay.”

“Barnby was quite right as to the value of the additional evidence,” said Thorndyke. “What he didn’t grasp was the very great difficulty of getting it. But I think I hear the big-wigs approaching.”

As he spoke, the usher threw open the lecturer’s door. The audience stood up, the president entered, preceded by the mace-bearer and followed by the officers and the lecturer, and took his seat; the audience sat down and the lecture began without further formalities.

The theatre was nearly full. It usually was when Professor D’Arcy lectured; for that genial savant had the magnetic gift of infusing his own enthusiasm into the lecture, and so into his audience, even when, as on this occasion, his subject lay on the outside edge of medical science. To-day he was lecturing on the epidermic appendages of the marine worms, and from the opening sentence he held his audience as by a spell, standing before the great blackboard with a bunch of coloured chalks in either hand, talking with easy eloquence—mostly over his shoulder—while he covered the black surface with those delightful drawings that added so much to the charm of his lectures. Phillip watched his flying fingers with fascination and struggled frantically to copy the diagrams into a large note-book with the aid of a handful of coloured pencils, while Thorndyke, not much addicted to note-taking, listened and watched with concentrated attention, mentally docketing and pigeon-holing any new or significant fact in what was to him a fairly familiar subject.

The latter part of the lecture dealt with those beautiful sea-worms that build themselves tubes to live in—worms like the Serpula that make their shelly or stony tubes by secretion from their own bodies, or like the Sabella or Terebella, build them up with sand-grains, little stones or fragments of shell. Each, in turn, appeared in lively portraiture on the blackboard and the trays on the table were full of specimens which were exhibited by the lecturer and which the audience were invited to inspect more closely after the lecture.

Accordingly, when the last words of the peroration had been pronounced, the occupants of the benches trouped down into the arena to look at the exhibits and seek further details from the genial professor. Thorndyke and Phillip held back for a while on the outskirts of the crowd, but the professor had seen them on their bench and now approached, greeting them with a hearty handshake and a facetious question.

“What are you doing here, Thorndyke? Is it possible that there are medico-legal possibilities even in a marine worm?”

“Oh, come, D’Arcy!” protested Thorndyke, “don’t make me such a hidebound specialist. May I have no rational interests in life? Must I live forever in the witness-box like a marine worm in its tube?”

“I suspect you don’t get very far out of your tube,” said the professor with a chuckle and a sly glance at Phillip.

“I got far enough out last summer,” retorted Thorndyke, “to come and aid and abet you in your worm-hunting. Have you forgotten Cornwall?”

“No, to be sure,” was the reply. “But that was only a momentary lapse, and I expect you had ulterior motives. However, the association of Cornwall, worm-hunting and medical jurisprudence reminds me that I have something in your line. A friend of mine, who was wintering in Cornwall, picked it up on the beach at Morte Hoe and sent it to me. Now, where is it? It is on this table somewhere. It is a ridiculous thing; a small, flat cork, evidently from a zoologist’s collecting-bottle, for it has a label stuck on it with the inscription ‘marine worms.’ It seems that our zoologist was a sort of Robinson Crusoe, for he had bored a couple of holes through it and evidently used it as a button. But the most ludicrous thing about it is that a Terebella has built its tube on it; as if the worm had been prowling about, looking for lodgings and had read the label and forthwith engaged the apartments. Ah! here it is.” He pounced on a little cardboard box, and opening it, took out the cork button and laid it in Thorndyke’s palm.

As the professor was describing the object Phillip looked at him with a distinctly startled expression, and uttered a smothered exclamation. He was about to speak, but suddenly checked himself and looked at Thorndyke, who flashed at him a quick glance of understanding.

“Isn’t that a quaint coincidence?” chuckled the professor. “I mean that the worm should have taken up his abode and actually built his tube on the label.”

“Very quaint,” replied Thorndyke, still looking with deep interest at the object that lay in his hand.

“You realize,” Phillip said in a low voice as the professor turned away to answer a question, “that this button came from Purcell’s oilskin coat?”

“Yes, I remember the incident. I realized what it was as soon as D’Arcy described the button.” He glanced curiously at Phillip, wondering whether he, too, realized exactly what this queer piece of jetsam was. For to Thorndyke its message had been conveyed even before the professor had finished speaking. In that moment it had been borne to him that the unlooked-for miracle had happened and that Margaret Purcell’s petition need never be filed.

“Well, Thorndyke,” said the Professor, “my friend’s treasure trove seems to interest you. I thought it would as an instance of the possibilities of coincidence. Quite a useful lesson to a lawyer, by the way.”

“Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “In fact, I was going to ask you to allow me to borrow it to examine at my leisure.”

The professor was delighted. “There now,” he chuckled with a mischievous twinkle at Phillip, “what did I tell you? He hasn’t come here for the comparative anatomy at all. He has just come to grub for legal data. And now, you see, the medico-legal worm has arrived and is instantly collared by the medical jurist. Take him, by all means, Thorndyke. You needn’t borrow him. I present him as a gift to your black museum. You needn’t return him.”

Thorndyke thanked the professor, and having packed the specimen with infinite tenderness in its cotton wool, bestowed the box in his waistcoat pocket. A few minutes later he and Phillip took their leave of the professor and departed, making their way through Lincoln’s Inn to Chancery Lane.

“That button gave me quite a shock for a moment,” said Phillip, “appearing out of the sea on the Cornish Coast; for, of course, it was on Purcell’s coat when he went ashore—at least I suppose it was. I understood Varney to say so.”

“He did,” said Thorndyke. “He mentioned the incident at dinner one evening and he then said definitely that the cork button was on the coat when Purcell went up the ladder.”

“Yes, and it seemed rather mysterious at first, as Purcell went right away from Cornwall. But there is probably quite a simple explanation. Purcell went to the East Coast by sea; and it is most likely that, when he got on board the steamer, he obtained a proper button from the steward, cut off the jury button and chucked it overboard. But it is a queer chance that it should have come back to us in this way.”

Thorndyke nodded. “A very queer chance,” he agreed. As he spoke, he looked at Phillip with a somewhat puzzled expression. He was, in fact, rather surprised. Phillip Rodney was a doctor, a man of science and an unquestionably intelligent person. He knew all the circumstances that were known and he had seen and examined the button; and yet he had failed to observe the one vitally important fact that stared him in the face.

“What made you want to borrow the button?” Phillip asked presently. “Was it that you wanted to keep it as a relic of the Purcell case?”

“I want to examine the worm-tube,” replied Thorndyke. “It is a rather unusual one; very uniform in composition. Mostly, Terebella tubes are very miscellaneous as to their materials—sand, shell, little pebbles and so forth. The material of this one seems to be all alike.”

“Probably the stuff that the worm was able to pick up in the neighbourhood of Morte Hoe.”

“That is possible,” said Thorndyke, and the conversation dropped for a moment, each man occupying himself with reflections on the other. To Phillip it seemed rather surprising that a man like Thorndyke, full of important business, should find time, or even inclination, to occupy himself with trivialities like this. For, after all, what did it matter whether this worm-tube was composed of miscellaneous gatherings or of a number of similar particles? No scientific interest attached to the question. It seemed rather a silly quest. And yet Thorndyke had thought it worth while to borrow the specimen for this very purpose.

Thorndyke, for his part, was more than ever astonished at the mental obtuseness of this usually acute and intelligent man. Not only had he failed in the first place to observe a most striking and significant fact; he could not see that fact even when his nose was rubbed hard on it.

As they passed through Old Buildings and approached the main gateway, Phillip slowed down. “I am going in to my brother’s chambers, here, to have tea with him. Do you care to join us? He will be glad to see you.”

Thorndyke, however, was in no mood for tea and gossip. He had got a first-class clue—a piece of really conclusive evidence. How conclusive it was and how far its conclusiveness went, he could not tell at present; and he was eager to get to work on the assay of this specimen in an evidential sense—to see exactly what was the amount and kind of evidence that the sea had cast up on the shore of Morte Hoe. He therefore excused himself, and having bidden Phillip adieu, he strode out into Chancery Lane and bore south towards the Temple.

On entering his chambers he discovered his assistant, Polton, in the act of transferring boiling water from a copper kettle to a small silver teapot; whereby he was able to infer that his approach had been observed by the said Polton from his lookout in the laboratory above. The two men, master and man, exchanged friendly greetings and Thorndyke then observed:

“I have got a job to do later on, Polton, when I have finished up the evening’s work. I shall want to grind some small sections of a mineral that I wish to identify. Would you put out one or two small hones and the other things that I shall need?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Polton. “I will put the mineral section outfit on a tray and bring it down after tea. But can’t I grind the sections? It seems a pity for you to be wasting your time on a mechanical job like that.”

“Thank you, Polton,” replied Thorndyke. “Of course you could cut the sections as well as, or better than, I can. But it is possible that I may have to produce the sections in evidence, and in that case it will be better if I can say that I cut them myself and that they were never out of my own hands. The Courts don’t know you as I do, you see, Polton.”

Polton acknowledged the compliment with a gratified smile and departed to the laboratory. As soon as he was gone Thorndyke brought forth the little cardboard box and having taken out the button, carried it over to the window, where, with the aid of his pocket lens, he made a long and careful examination of the worm-tube; the result of which was to confirm his original observation. The mineral particles of which the tube was built up were of various shapes and sizes, from mere sand-grains up to quite respectable little pebbles. But, so far as he could see, they were all of a similar material. What that material was, an expert mineralogist would have been able, no doubt, to say offhand; and an expert opinion would probably have to be obtained. But in the meantime his own knowledge was enough to enable him to form a fairly reliable opinion when he had made the necessary investigations.

As he drank his tea he reflected on this extraordinary windfall. Circumstances had conspired in the most singular manner against Varney. How much they had conspired remained to be seen. That depended on how much the worm-tube had to tell. But even if no further light were thrown on the matter by the nature of the mineral, there was evidence enough to prove that Purcell had never landed at Penzance. The Terebella had already given that much testimony. And the cross-examination was yet to come.

Having finished tea, he fell to work on the reports and written opinions which had to be completed and sent off by the last post; and it was characteristic of the man that, though the button and its as yet half-read message lurked in the subconscious part of his mind as the engrossing object of interest, he was yet able to concentrate the whole of his conscious attention on the matters with which he was outwardly occupied. Twice during the evening Polton stole silently into the room, once to deposit on a side table the little tray containing the mineral section appliances and the second time to place on a small table near the fire a larger tray bearing the kind of frugal, informal supper that Thorndyke usually consumed when alone and at work.

“If you wait a few moments, Polton, I shall have these letters ready for the post. Then we shall both be free. I don’t want to see anybody to-night unless it is something urgent.”

“Very well, sir,” replied Polton. “I will switch the bell on to the laboratory and I’ll see that you are not disturbed unnecessarily.”

With this he took up the letters which Thorndyke had sealed and stamped and reluctantly withdrew, not without a last, wistful glance at the apparatus on the tray.

As the door closed behind him, Thorndyke rose, and, bringing forth the button from the drawer in which he had bestowed it, began operations at once. First, with a pair of fine forceps he carefully picked off the worm-tube half-a-dozen of the largest fragments and laid them on a glass slide. This he placed on the stage of the microscope and, having fitted on a two-inch objective, made a preliminary inspection under various conditions of light, both transmitted and reflected. When he had got clearly into his mind the general character of the unknown rock, he fetched from a store cabinet in the office a number of shallow drawers filled with labelled specimens of rocks and minerals; and he also placed on the table in readiness for reference one or two standard works on geology and petrology. But before examining either the books or the specimens in the drawers, he opened out a geological chart of the British Isles and closely scrutinized the comparatively small area with which the button was concerned—the Land’s End and the North and South Coasts of Cornwall. A very brief scrutiny of the map showed him that the enquiry could now be narrowed down to a quite small group of rocks, the majority of which he could exclude at once by his own knowledge of the more familiar types; which was highly satisfactory. But there was evidently something more than this. Any one who should have been observing him as he pored over the chart, would have seen, by a suddenly increased attention, with a certain repressed eagerness, that some really illuminating fact had come into view; and his next proceedings would make clear to such an observer that the problem had already changed from one search to a definite and particular identification. From the chart he turned to the drawers of specimens, running his eye quickly over their contents as if looking for some specific object; and this object he presently found in a little cardboard tray—a single fragment of a grey, compact rock, which he pounced upon at once, and picking it out of its tray, laid it on the slide with the fragments from the worm-tube. Careful comparison gave the impression that they were identical in character, but the great difference in the size of the fragments compared was a source of possible error. Accordingly he wrapped the specimen lightly in paper, and with a hammer from the tool-drawer struck it a sharp blow, which broke it into a number of smaller fragments, some of them quite minute. Picking out one or two of the smallest from the paper, and carefully noting the “conchoidal” character of the fracture, he placed them on a separate slide which he at once labelled “stock specimen,” labelling the other slide “worm-tube.” Having taken this precaution against possible confusion, he laid the two slides on the stage of the microscope and once more made a minute comparison. And again the conclusion emerged that the fragments from the worm-tube were identical in all their characters with the fragments of the stock specimen.

It now remained to test this conclusion by more exact methods. Two more labelled slides having been prepared, Thorndyke laid them, label downwards, on the table and dropped on each a large drop of melted Canada balsam. In one drop, while it was still soft, he immersed two or three fragments from the worm-tube; in the other a like number of fragments of the stock specimen. Then he heated both slides over a spirit lamp to liquefy the balsam and completely immerse the fragments, and laid them aside to cool while he prepared the appliances for grinding the sections.

This process was, as Polton had hinted, a rather tedious one. It consisted in rubbing the two slides backwards and forwards upon a wetted Turkey stone until the fragments of rock were ground to a flat surface. The flattened surfaces had then to be polished upon a smoother stone and when this had been done, the slides were once more heated over the spirit lamp, the balsam liquefied, and each of the fragments neatly turned over with a needle on its flat side. When the balsam was cool and set hard, the grinding process was repeated until each of the fragments was worn down to a thin plate or film with parallel sides. Then the slides were again heated, a fresh drop of balsam applied and a cover-glass laid on top. The specimens were now finished and ready for examination.

On this, the final stage of the investigation, he bestowed the utmost care and attention. The two specimens were examined exhaustively and compared again and again by every possible method, including the use of the polariscope and the spectroscope; and the results of each observation were at once written down. Finally, Thorndyke turned to the books of reference, and selecting a highly technical work on petrology, checked his written notes by the very detailed descriptions that it furnished of rocks of volcanic origin. And once again the results were entirely confirmatory of the opinion that he had at first formed. No doubt whatever was left in his mind as to the nature of the particles of rock of which the worm had built its tube. But if his opinion was correct, he held evidence producible in a court of law that Daniel Purcell had never landed at Penzance; that, in fact, his dead body was even now lying at the bottom of the sea.

As he consumed his frugal supper Thorndyke turned over the situation in his mind. He had no doubts at all. But it would be necessary to get his identification of the rock confirmed by a recognized authority who could be called as a witness and whose statement would be accepted by the court as establishing the facts. There was no difficulty about that. He had a friend who was connected with the Geological Museum and who was recognized throughout the world as a first-class authority on everything relating to the physical and chemical proprieties of rocks and minerals. He would take the specimens to-morrow to this expert and ask him to examine them; and when the authoritative opinion had been pronounced, he would consider what procedure he should adopt. Already there was growing up in his mind a doubt as to the expediency of taking action on purely scientific evidence; and in answer to that doubt a new scheme began to suggest itself.

But for the moment he put it aside. The important thing was to get the expert identification of the rock and so put his evidence on the basis of established fact. The conversion of scientific into legal evidence was a separate matter that could be dealt with later. And having reached this conclusion, he took a sheet of note paper from the rack and wrote a short letter to his friend at the museum making an appointment for the following afternoon. A few minutes later he dropped it into the box of the Fleet Street Post Office and for the time being dismissed the case from his mind.