The Secret Files of Sherlock Holmes (22 page)

‘A yeggman?’

‘Have you not heard the name before? It is a slang term of uncertain etymology which means an itinerant burglar or safe-breaker who travels from “drum” to “drum” committing the actual felony. A “drum”, by the way, Watson, in case that word is also unfamiliar to you, is a house or building, in this case the premises selected for the robbery.’

‘Yes, I am aware of that, Holmes,’ I put in.

‘We also know’, Holmes continued, ignoring my interpolation, ‘what equipment the yeggman brought with him. Apart from the usual cracksman’s tools of a glass-cutter and a set of “bettys” – picklocks to you, Watson – it included a rope ladder. It was for this reason I inquired at the George about a man carrying a large bag. Even rolled up, a rope ladder is quite bulky. The bag must also have contained the various wigs and moustaches, as well as the changes of clothing, with which they altered their appearances.

‘As for their movements on the night of the burglary, we can establish these in such detail that it is almost as if we are treading on their heels! They travelled down from London on the 7.35 train, dined at the George and then probably made their way to Whitestone Manor across the fields by a footpath. I noticed a sign for such a path on the drive from the station. Having gained entry to the grounds of the manor, they waited until all the lights of the house were extinguished before, donning their felt slippers, they effected their entrance through the drawing-room window and quietly helped themselves to those art treasures which Vanderbilt had already selected on his previous visit to the house last November.

‘On the same occasion, Vanderbilt was shown over the upper floor so he would have know exactly which bedrooms were occupied by Sir Edgar and the servants. He would also have had the opportunity to ascertain whether or not a guard dog was kept on the premises. Once the burglary was successfully completed, they then changed their appearances and walked back across the fields to Great Walden station in time to catch the 5.12 train to London. There is no doubt about any of that. The question is – was a third man involved?’

‘A third man, Holmes? But there can’t have been. There were only two glasses.’

‘I do not mean at the actual burglary, Watson. I am speaking of an agent of Vanderbilt and his yeggman who was responsible for the disposal of the art treasures once they were stolen. Alternatively, there may have been no middleman and Vanderbilt sold the objects directly to a collector with whom he had already struck up a deal.’

‘You are surely not implying that the items were stolen to order?’

‘It is not entirely impossible. You will recall the theft some time ago of the Fragonard from the Walpole collection which was purloined on the specific directions of Monsieur Henri de la Bertauche, the
escargot
millionaire, to add to his own collection of that artist’s work. We may be dealing with a similar situation here. Of course, if that is the case, the heirlooms can never be placed on public display but will have to remain for the private delectation only of whoever arranged their thefts. We may discover the truth when we apprehend Vanderbilt and his accomplice.’

‘You sound very sure they will be arrested.’

‘I have every confidence, Watson.’

To tease him a little, I remarked, ‘Now that Inspector Lestrade has been called in on the case, you may find our old friend from Scotland Yard will beat you to the finishing post, Holmes. After all, if the evidence is there for you to uncover, there is nothing to prevent Lestrade from coming to the same conclusions.’

‘But he will fail to make the right connections, Watson. Take my word on that. I have studied Lestrade’s methods and I know exactly how his mind works. He may indeed uncover some of the facts of the Whitestone Manor burglary but he will not look further afield to the other similar thefts which have occurred over the past two years. It is one of the greatest weaknesses of our police force as it is at present organised. It is too fragmented. Each county constabulary is isolated within its own boundaries. They are like gamekeepers, concerned only with what happens inside their own little estates while the criminals, such as Vanderbilt and his yeggman, who recognise no such bounds, move freely between them. One would think the railways had not been invented! What is needed is some central intelligence agency to which each police force would send details of all major crimes that occur in their area. I know if I were ever appointed head of Scotland Yard – which Heaven forbid! – I should make the establishment of such a bureau my first priority.

‘It is because I have collected up all the relevant data that I
am confident of bringing Vanderbilt and his accomplice to justice. Indeed, Watson, if you care to call in at Baker Street on Friday afternoon, I shall lay those facts before you. You can arrange to be free at half past two, can you not, my dear fellow? I shall be most disappointed if you deny me that pleasure.’

It was difficult to refuse Holmes at any time, more particularly when he was in such a sprightly and good-humoured mood and, as he had requested, I returned to Baker Street at the appointed time to be met in the hall by a harassed-looking Mrs Hudson who, on my inquiring if anything were the matter, burst out with uncharacteristic agitation for one usually so calm, ‘It’s Mr Holmes, Dr Watson! He’s been up and down to the kitchen for the past two days asking for baking-powder and rabbits’ feet and goodness knows what else besides. And saucers! I have hardly a clean one left in the house. And that isn’t all. He’s asked the maid, the page-boy, even the postman, to pick up those little glass slides he puts into his microscope. He says it is part of a scientific experiment but it makes it very difficult for me to carry out my work.’

I thought I could guess what lay behind the experiment although I admit some of the ingredients puzzled me and, on entering the sitting-room, I inquired, ‘What’s all this I hear about baking-powder and rabbits’ feet, Holmes?’

Holmes, who was stooping his long, thin frame over his scientific bench, looked round at my query.

‘Rabbit’s
foot,
my dear Watson,’ he corrected me. ‘Singular, not plural. I fear Mrs Hudson has been confiding in you. An excellent woman in many ways but, like all her sex, she prefers the routine of daily life to an exploration of the esoteric. And not just baking-powder either. Come over here and see what I have been doing.’

The bench was strewn with a motley collection of objects. In addition to the microscope slides laid end to end, there was a small regiment of saucers containing different substances amongst which I recognised soot, cigar ash, powdered charcoal and flour. The rabbit’s foot was also in evidence together with a selection of brushes which included Holmes’ own badger-hair
shaving-brush. In pride of place in the centre of the bench stood the two port glasses from Whitestone Manor.

‘First of all, examine the glasses through the lens,’ Holmes continued, handing me that object. ‘You will observe that three fingermarks are clearly discernible on their surfaces, on one the imprint of a thumb and a little finger, on the other a second thumb impression. Do not trouble with the other marks. They are too blurred to be of any use.’

‘Yes, I can indeed see them!’ I exclaimed, surprised to discover how clearly the prints, which had been dusted over with a white powder, stood out against the glass. It was possible to discern the patterns of each individual mark.

When I commented on this, Holmes replied, ‘Precisely, Watson! That is the whole point of the experiment. Now, if you care to look at this sheet of paper, you will see that I have made exact drawings of those prints, marking in the patterns of loops, whorls and ridges. You will observe that the two thumb marks are quite different, one possessing a double loop while on the other, which has only one, the lines are much farther apart. Now if you compare those with these other thumb impressions on the microscope slides, belonging respectively to Mrs Hudson, the postman and the boy in buttons, you will also observe that they also have their own distinctive patterns. In other words, Watson, the chances of one person’s finger patterns matching another’s is so small that the figures are hardly worth taking into account.

‘Now I do not know if you are aware that in October of last year, a committee under the chairmanship of Mr Troup of the Home Office issued a report following their inquiries into the best method of identifying habitual criminals – whether the Bertillon anthropometric system was to be preferred over the alternative suggestion of recording the felons’ finger marks.’

‘I thought you were a keen supporter of the Bertillon method, Holmes.’

‘Indeed I was, my dear Watson. At the time, it was the only means by which the habitual criminal could be identified. But first one had to catch one’s felon before one could photograph him and take all the necessary detailed measurements of his
physiognomy. However, I am now an enthusiast of the alternative system – that of finger impressions. I have been closely following the pioneer work done in this field, undertaken in Britain by Sir Francis Galton, the eminent anthropologist and eugenist, and by the Argentinian, Juan Vecutich, both of whom have done sterling service in devising methods by which the individual finger patterns can be identified and recorded. In fact, I understand the Central Police Department of La Plata, Argentina, introduced a finger pattern system four years ago and have therefore stolen a march on our own Scotland Yard. But it will come, Watson! It will come!
*

‘However, we can comfort ourselves with the thought that it was two fellow countrymen of ours, Dr Henry Faulds and Sir William Herschel, who first suggested the value of finger marks for purposes of identification and who published articles on the subject in the magazine
Nature
as long ago as 1880. Indeed, Sir William can rightly be called the father of the finger pattern method for it was he who initially introduced the system into the prisons when he was administrator of the Hooghly district of Bengal.

‘But, useful though the method is for identifying felons once they are in custody,’ Holmes continued, his voice growing vibrant with excitement, ‘as far as I am concerned, the beauty of it is its application at the scene of a crime
before
the villain is apprehended. Think of it, Watson! A burglary, say, or a murder is committed. The perpetrator leaves the marks of his fingers on some object. These impressions are then matched to records held at Scotland Yard of known felons, by which means his identity is immediately established. Or, should he not have a criminal record, they can be kept on file until such time as he is arrested. Either way, the villain is linked as indisputably to his crime as if he had had his photograph taken at the moment of committing it! It adds a new interpretation to the old saying “to be caught red-handed”.’

‘Yes, I see that, Holmes. But what are all these saucers and brushes for?’

‘Oh, those!’ Holmes said carelessly. ‘I have been experimenting with various substances to dust over latent finger marks in order to make them more visible to the naked eye. Powdered chalk is the best, I find, applied with a fine camel-hair brush, using only the tip of it with quick, curving strokes. I am considering writing a monograph on the subject. And speaking of writing, Watson, I have received a number of replies to those letters I wrote the other day. To save you the trouble of reading through the whole collection, I shall summarise the information for your benefit.

‘Firstly, the houses that were burgled over the past two years. All five owners have replied and without exception, each one of them received a visit from a man five to six months before the actual felonies were committed. Let me go briefly over them in turn. In one case, it was our old friend Professor Vanderbilt but on this occasion he was in his forties, dark-haired and came from the University of Los Angeles. Then there were two German Professors, one from Munich who had a small goatee beard; the other from Dresden, with grey whiskers and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. Finally, there was a Frenchman, head of Medieval Studies at the Municipal Museum of Bordeaux, who sported a fine black, waxed moustache and walked with a limp. All claimed to be experts in some particular architectural style featured in the houses which were later burgled, from fifteenth-century stone mullions to Regency fireplaces.

‘As for the objects which were stolen from the various premises, allow me to read a few items from the list I have compiled. “A jewelled fan which had belonged to Lord Maplewood’s great-grandmother. A collection of eighteenth-century family silhouettes carved from ivory. A pair of silver salts given by Charles II to a female ancestor of the Duke of Medwater.” I could go on, Watson, but I believe you may have grasped their significance.

‘For my part, I am convinced that they were stolen on the specific orders of a private collector. Indeed, I am beginning to
build up a picture of the man, stroke by stroke. He is undoubtedly very rich and almost certainly eccentric, for what normal man would go to such extremes to acquire these objects? In addition, I see him as a self-made millionaire with some doubt surrounding his own antecedents which causes him great personal shame and distress. He could be either a bastard or a foundling.’

‘Oh, I say, Holmes!’ I protested. ‘You are reading too much into the situation.’

‘I think not,’ he replied with a quiet confidence which cut short any further objection. ‘Consider the items which have been stolen by Vanderbilt on this man’s behalf. They are all personal belongings once owned by some illustrious individual of historic interest or importance. I believe that our collector, whom for reasons of easy reference I shall call the Magpie, has ordered their theft in order to provide himself with the illusion that he can lay claim to the same eminent and wealthy forebears as compensation for his own doubtful pedigree.

‘As you know, Watson, I am not normally a fanciful man. I prefer facts to speculation. And yet, I must confess that the Magpie has caught my imagination. I can picture him alone in a locked room, gloating over these family treasures as if they were his own.’