Tracks in the Snow

Assyrians. You will remember the time in 1882 when you were at Nagasaki, and you will remember Longhurst’s being there and his sailing. After his disappearance it got about naturally that he sailed in that unhappy ship the William the Silent, which went down in a cyclone. Now I have a distinct recollection that when I met you, some months after that, you told me that you had seen Longhurst with Cartwright at Nagasaki, that you saw them off, and that they both sailed together in the same ship. I have forgotten the name of the ship you mentioned, but it was a ship with some female name, and it belonged to your people. Will you please tell me at once if my recollection is right. As for my reason for asking, I expect I told you fully my reasons for believing that Longhurst died by some foul play. I may have told you the suspicion which I had as to who did it. It was a suspicion for which I was sorry afterwards, for I saw reason to think it quite unfounded. But I have just seen a man, whom I need not name, who must have known when and how Longhurst sailed from Nagasaki; and he astonished me by saying that he sailed in the William the Silent. Now one of three things: either I have got muddled in my recollection as to what you said, or, which I can hardly believe, I was mistaken in my identification of the body which I exhumed from the tomb which the chiefs showed me, or I was right in both points, and then a conclusion seems to follow which I shrink very much from drawing. There is one other matter of fact which I suspect and which I can easily verify, which would absolutely fix the guilt on the man I allude to, but I want to make quite sure from you that my memory is right as to Longhurst’s sailing. A suspicion of my man’s guilt came to me as I have said, long ago, but after making some enquiries I dismissed it summarily, for I have, or ought to have, a sort of hereditary friendship with him.”

So then my hypothesis had been further put to the test of facts, and again some of the points which I had guessed had proved to be true. It was no longer only a fanciful imagination of my own, but a suspicion which any sane man with the facts before him must feel, and feel very strongly. There was more than enough evidence for any sensible historian, for a lawyer there was still none at all.

In September the time came that we were to leave Long Wilton for good. We then moved to a country parish, which, though deep in the country, is yet very near to London (and I thenceforward often came to town). Naturally leaving one parish and getting into another, not to speak of the change of house, filled my whole time with work to be finished now or never, and with arrangements which must instantly be set on foot for future work.

Before the close of the year 1896 (I think it was late in October, anyway it was some time after I had settled into my new parish), a further record of the sort for which I have been looking came to light. It was my business as executor to sell certain securities which had belonged to Peters, and for a long time there was a difficulty in finding with whom those securities were lodged. Eventually, however, they were found in the hands of the firm who had been his agents while he was absent in the East, and in sending them to me, the firm sent also a packet which they told me had been deposited with them for safe keeping in the year 1884, on the occasion of a brief visit home which Peters had made. The packet was a large envelope on which was written “Notes on the affair of L.” On opening it I found first two maps drawn by Peters. The one was a rough copy of a map of the island Sulu, in the Philippines. The other a map on larger scale, very carefully drawn, apparently from Peters’ own survey, of a small portion of the island. It was inscribed “Chart showing the spot where the tomb of a dead white man was shown me by the two chiefs.” Next I found a number of sheets taken out of Peters’ journal, kept in the year 1882 in the months of July and August. From this it appeared that Peters had at that time accompanied one Dr. Kuyper, who seemed to have been a naturalist, upon a cruise in the Philippines, and that they had come to a village upon the coast of the island, where the Filipinos informed them that a month or so before, a European, they thought an Englishman, had come down from somewhere inland, with several Malay and Chinese servants, and had requested assistance in burying the body of his companion. The dead man, he stated, had been killed by a fall from some rocks. The Filipino chiefs had told Peters that the servants, who had not been present when the fall took place, were much excited, and seemed suspicious about it, but that the manner and the answers of the European traveller had allayed their own suspicion. Something, however, seems to have aroused suspicion in Peters and Kuyper, for they disinterred the body. Peters’ journal proceeded to record certain facts about the body, the clothing, etc. (in particular the fact that a finger was missing on one hand), which had led Peters to identify the body as that of his former acquaintance, Longhurst. He recorded also that they had found two bullets from a revolver in the back of the head, and he made a note as to the size and pattern of revolver