Part 50

“Yes; and you may take it as correct. Anything else?”

“I should have liked to look over a series of the cheques drawn by the firm. The last two, I suppose, are inaccessible?”

“Yes. They will be at the bank, and we couldn’t inspect them without an order of the Court. But, as to the others, if they are at the office, I think you could see them. I’ll come along with you now if you like, and have a look round myself. Our people are in possession.”

We at once closed with the superintendent’s offer and proceeded with him by the Underground Railway to the Mansion House, from whence we made our way to Queen Victoria Street, where Reed and Jarman had their offices. A sergeant was in charge at the moment, and to him the superintendent addressed himself.

“Have you found any returned cheques?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the sergeant; “lots of ’em. We’ve been through them all.”

As he spoke he produced several bundles of cheques and laid them on a desk, the drawers of which all stood open.

“Well,” said Miller, “there they are, Doctor. I don’t know what you want to find out, but I expect you do.” He placed a chair by the desk, and as Thorndyke sat down and proceeded to turn the cheques over, he watched him with politely-suppressed curiosity.

“It appears,” said Thorndyke, “as if these two men had mixed up their private affairs with the business account. Here, for instance, is a cheque drawn by Reed for the Picardy Wine Company. But that company could hardly have been a client. And this one of Jarman’s for the Secretary of the St. John’s Nursing Home must be a private cheque, and so I should say are these two for F. Waller, Esq., F.R.C.S., and for Andrew Darton, Esq., L.D.S. They are drawn for professional men and both are--like the Nursing Home cheque--stated in even amounts of guineas, whereas the business cheques are in uneven amounts of pounds, shillings and pence.”

“I think you are right, sir,” said Miller. “The business seems to have been conducted in a very casual manner. And just look at those signatures! Never twice alike. The banks hate that sort of thing, naturally. When a customer signs in the signature book he has given a specimen for reference and he ought to keep to it strictly. A man who varies his signature is asking for trouble.”

“He is,” Thorndyke agreed, as he rapidly entered a few particulars of the cheques in his note-book; “particularly in the case of a firm with a staff of clerks.”

He stood up, and having pocketed his notebook, held out his hand.

“I am very much obliged to you, Superintendent,” he said.

“Seen all that you wanted to see?” Miller asked.

“Thank you, yes,” Thorndyke replied.

“I should very much like to know what you have seen,” Miller rejoined; to which my colleague replied by waving his hand towards the cheques, as he turned to go.

“I don’t quite see the bearing of those cheques on our inquiry,” I said, as we took our way homeward along Cheapside.

“It is not very direct,” Thorndyke replied; “but the cheques help us to understand the characters of these two men and their relations with one another; which may be very necessary when we come to the inquest.”

During the following day I saw very little of Thorndyke, for our excursion to Dartford had put our work somewhat in arrear and we had to secure a free day for the inquest on the morrow. We met at dinner after the day’s work, but, beyond settling the programme for the next day, nothing of importance passed with reference to the “Rick Case.”

The opening phases of the inquest, though of thrilling interest to the numerous spectators and Press men, did not particularly concern us. The evidence of the rural constable, the farmer and the police inspector--with whom Thorndyke had a little confidential talk and apparently surprised the officer considerably--merely amplified what we knew already. Of more interest was that of a local dentist who testified to having examined the dental plate and to having compared it with the skull of the dead man. “The plate and the jaw of deceased,” he said, “agree completely. The jaw contains five natural teeth in two groups, and the plate has two spaces which exactly correspond to those two groups of teeth. I have tried the plate on the jaw and have no doubt whatever that it belonged to deceased.”

“That is a very important fact,” Thorndyke remarked to me as the witness retired. “It is the indispensable link in the chain.”

“But surely it was obvious?” said I.

“No doubt,” he replied. “But now it is proved and in evidence.”

I was somewhat puzzled by Thorndyke’s remark, but the appearance of a new witness forbade discussion. Mr. Arthur Gerrard was an alert-looking, rather tall man, with bushy, Mephistophelian eyebrows and a small, dark moustache, who wore a pair of large bifocal spectacles, and to whom a small mole at the corner of the mouth imparted the effect of a permanent one-sided smile.

“It was on your information,” said the coroner, “that the identity of the deceased was established.”

“Yes,” replied the witness, who spoke with a slight, but perceptible, Irish accent. “I saw the description in the papers of the things that had been found in the rick and at once recognized them as Reed’s. I knew deceased intimately and had often noticed his peculiar watch-chain and the little china mascot and seen him smoking the clay pipe with his initials scratched on it; and I knew that he wore false teeth.”

“Did you meet him frequently?”

“Oh, yes. For more than a year he was my partner in business, and we remained friends after I had dissolved the partnership.”