“Certainly,” replied Thorndyke. “He quite understands that our talk is confidential, even if it is not secret.”
The officer nodded, and, having been inducted into an easy chair, by the side of which a decanter, a siphon, and a box of cigars had been placed, settled himself comfortably, lit a cigar, mixed himself a modest refresher, and drew from his pocket a bundle of papers secured with red tape.
“You asked me, Doctor,” he began, “to get you all particulars up to date of the Van Zellen case. Well, I can do that without difficulty as the case—or at least what is left of it—is in my hands. The circumstances of the actual crime I think you know already, so I will take up the story from that point.
“Van Zellen, as you know, was found dead in his room, poisoned with prussic acid, and a quantity of very valuable portable property was missing. It was not clear whether the murderer had let himself in with false keys or whether Van Zellen had let him in; but the place hadn’t been broken into. The job had been done with remarkable skill, so that not a trace of the murderer was left. Consequently, all that was left for the police to do was to consider whether they knew of anyone whose methods agreed with those of this murderer.
“Well, they did know of such a person, but they had nothing against him but suspicion. He had never been convicted of any serious crime, though he had been in chokee once or twice for receiving. But there had been a number of cases of robbery with murder—or rather murder with robbery, for this man seemed to have committed the murder as a preliminary precaution—and they were all of this kind; a solitary crime, very skilfully carried out by means of poison. There was never any trace of the criminal; but gradually the suspicions of the police settled down on a rather mysterious individual of the name of Bendelow; Simon Bendelow. Consequently, when the Van Zellen crime came to light, they were inclined to put it on this man Bendelow, and they began making fresh inquiries about him. But presently it transpired that someone had seen a man, on the morning of the crime, coming away from the neighbourhood of Van Zellen’s house just about the time when the murder must have been committed.”
“Was there anything to connect him with the crime?” Thorndyke asked.
“Well, there was the time—the small hours of the morning—and the man was carrying a good-sized handbag, which seemed to be pretty heavy and which would have held the stuff that was missing. But the most important point was the man’s appearance. He was described as a smallish man, clean-shaved, with a big hooked nose and very heavy eyebrows set close down over his eyes.
“Now this put Bendelow out of it as the principal suspect, because the description didn’t fit him at all” (here I caught Thorndyke’s eye for an instant and was warned afresh, and not unnecessarily, to make no comment); “but,” continued the Superintendent, “it didn’t put him out altogether. For the man whom the description did fit—and it fitted him to a T—was a fellow named Crile—Jonathan Crile—who was a pal of Bendelow’s and was known to have worked with him as a confederate in the receiving business and had been in prison once or twice. So the police started to make inquiries about Crile, and before long they were able to run him to earth. But that didn’t do them much good; for it turned out that Crile wasn’t in New York at all. He was in Philadelphia; and it was clearly proved that he had been there on the day of the murder, on the day before and the day after. So they seemed to have drawn a blank; but they were still a bit suspicious of Mr. Crile, who seems to have been as downy a bird as his friend Bendelow, and of the other chappie, too. But they hadn’t a crumb of evidence against either.
“So there the matter stuck. A complete deadlock. There was nothing to be done; for you can’t arrest a man on mere suspicion with not a single fact to support it. But the police kept their eye on both gents, so far as they could, and presently they got a chance. Bendelow made a slip—or, at any rate, they said he did. It was a little trumpery affair, something in the receiving line, and of no importance at all. Probably, a faked charge, too. But they thought that if they could get him arrested they might be able to squeeze something out of him—the police in America can do things that we aren’t allowed to. So they tried to pounce on him. But Mr. Bendelow was a slippery customer, and he got wind of their intentions just in time. When they got into his rooms they found that he had left—in a deuce of a hurry, too, and only a few minutes before they arrived. They searched the place, but found nothing incriminating, and they tried to get on Bendelow’s track, but they didn’t succeed. He had managed to get clear away, and Crile seemed to have disappeared, too.
“Well, that seemed to be the end of the affair. Both of these crooks had made off without leaving a trace, and the police—having no evidence—didn’t worry any more about them. And so things went on for about a year, until the Van Zellen case had been given up and nearly forgotten. Then something happened quite recently that gave the police a fresh start.
“It appears that there was a fire in the house in which Bendelow’s rooms were, and a good deal of damage was done, so that they had to do some rebuilding; and in the course of the repairs, the builder’s men found, hidden under
