Pandemonium broke loose. Women screamed, and a panic was threatened.
‘That’s him! That’s him!’ shouted several people, as a policeman ran down the ramp and grabbed the man who had attracted Fordney’s attention.
‘Tryin’ to get away, are you?’ bellowed the cop.
‘I didn’t do it! Let go of me!’ he cried, as the officer dragged him to the office.
Fordney followed. ‘May I ask a few questions?’ he inquired.
‘Let’s see your score card, young man. H’m, why didn’t you record that last hit? Everything else is here.’
‘Why, I was running at the time. I had an engagement.’
‘I see,’ said Fordney. ‘Officer, you have the wrong man. He didn’t do it.’
How did Fordney know?
58 _A Soldier of Fortune_
‘You’ll find Walter Briggs interesting, Fordney. He’s been all over the world,’ said Attorney Hamilton over the telephone. ‘He’s turned up after two years, claiming his uncle’s fortune. Better dine with us tonight.’
‘Thanks, I’ll be glad to. See you at eight.’
As the three men sat around the dinner-table, Fordney remarked: ‘You’re a fortunate chap, Briggs. What have you been doing in the thirty-two years you have been away from America?’
‘Well, lots of things. Mr. Hamilton, no doubt, told you I went to the Congo with Father when I was three. When he died, I attended school in England. Then I traveled for a while; did a bit of tiger-shooting in Africa, killed elephants in India, and became an ivory-trader, roaming over the Orient four or five years. I finally drifted into Russia, where I was a technical advisor to the Soviet.’
‘What a jolly life you’ve had, Briggs!’
‘Not altogether, Professor. I was in Manchuria, where life was anything but jolly. And then, being in sympathy with the Chinese, I took an active part in the Sino-Japanese War. It was in China I learned of my uncle’s death, so I came to New York immediately.’
‘Are you remaining here?’ asked Hamilton.
‘No. Me for Paris as soon as things are settled.’
After a pleasant evening, the three men parted. Reaching home, Fordney hesitated about telephoning Hamilton. After all, it _was_ his duty to advise him to check Briggs’s story carefully before turning over the inheritance. As for him, he was frankly skeptical!
Are you? Why?
59 _Number Twenty-Six_
‘You fellows _must_ remember that more often than otherwise the little, seemingly inconsequential trifles, placed together, lead to the solution of crime. Never take anything for granted; examine thoroughly what appear to be the most unimportant details. You didn’t do so well with your last lesson,’ said Professor Fordney, addressing his class. ‘Now try your wits at this one.
‘“I know it sounds fishy, Inspector,”’ continued he, reading from a paper, ‘“but I was walkin’ along Sixteenth Street mindin’ my business. When I gets in front of number 26 I hears a dame scream ‘Help! Murder!’ so I dashed up the steps to the house, pushed open the door, and rushed in. As I was halfway through the hall, a big guy steps out of a room and says, ‘Ah, there, Mr. Farrell, just in time!’ I asks him what’s goin’ on, and just then three coppers came in and takes me, this guy, and a woman, in. Neither one of them would talk to me on the way, so I don’t know what it’s all about.”
‘“I’m going around myself,” replied the Inspector. “I’ll talk with you when I get back.”
‘As Kelley turned the knob at number 26, the door was violently pushed open in his face.
‘“Sorry,” said Detective Bradford. “Just going back to Headquarters. Found plenty of dope all right. Here’s something you’ll be interested in,” showing Kelley a man’s hat initialed “D.F.” “There are three packets of cocaine under the sweatband.”
‘This story, of course, is fictitious,’ said Fordney, putting down the paper, ‘but it illustrates my point. There’s just one, small, unimportant detail that’s wrong. To repeat, you _must learn_ to detect inconsistencies quickly, however insignificant. Quickly, now!’
Do _you_ get it?
In the next few anecdotes you will see the Professor at work and at play, on cases both serious and amusing, involving pure deduction.
As in the preceding cases, however, every fact, with the clue necessary to the solution, is given. There is only one right and logical answer to each—to be deduced from the evidence presented.
Time yourself; see how long it takes _you_ to deduce the answer. And then, after you have solved or missed them, try them on your friends. They make a fascinating game—and there are lots of people who don’t play bridge.
60 _The Pullman Car Murder_
‘Tell your story to Professor Fordney,’ said the superintendent, introducing the conductor.
‘Well,’ said Jackson, ‘last night just after we left Albany, lower eight let out a terrifying shriek. I was standing at one end of the car, the maid, porter, and brakeman at the other end. We met at the berth as Briggs was gasping his last from a knife wound in the heart. I immediately had both doors of the car guarded as well as the doors to the washrooms. Every berth was occupied, and by this time the passengers were milling around in the aisle.
‘I began to look for the missing knife with which Briggs had been killed. Every passenger, even the maid, brakeman, and porter, every inch of the car and all baggage, were searched, but still we failed to find it.
‘The window-sills were covered with freshly fallen snow and an examination proved that none of them had been opened. No one had left the car and no one had entered either washroom. I knew the knife must be in the car—but where?
‘Washington, our old Negro porter, really discovered the murderer’s identity by “scrutinizin’ ’em all.”
‘I know your reputation, Professor, so you will probably have little difficulty in determining how Washington located the assassin, but I’ll bet you can’t tell me where I found the knife.’
Jackson’s face fell as Fordney quickly replied, ‘As there was only one possible place it could have been, you found it....’
How long did it take _you_ to discover the knife?
61 _Forgery_
‘Can it be possible that this has happened to me!’ thought Everett Taber, as he stood in the National Bank of New York ready to deposit his fortune. Having completed his arrangements late the day before with the bank’s executives, he was the first patron of the morning. Standing alone in the bank’s commodious quarters, he regretted he had no one with whom to share his happiness.
Suddenly, as he was making out his deposit slip, he decided to use his own name, Everett Mead, instead of his stepfather’s name, by which he had been known most of his life. It would be a simple matter to arrange this with the officials later. As he blotted the deposit slip, Everett Mead felt a new sense of poise and self-assurance take possession of him. He gazed fondly at the name which proclaimed him a wealthy man. By changing it he could completely sever former associations and start life anew. What a wonderful day it was!
The cashier, impressed with the amount of the deposit, was very obliging and wondered, as he thought of his own meager salary, how it would feel to have so much money.
‘I see you are left-handed, Mr. Mead,’ he said, in an effort to appear interested in such an important personage.
‘Yes,’ smilingly.
He left the bank without further conversation. Less than an hour later his name had been forged to a check for five thousand dollars, despite the fact that no one knew he had changed his name and no one had seen him make out his deposit slip.
Professor Fordney, acquainted with the facts, knew immediately how the forgery had been accomplished. Do you?
62 _The Christmas Eve Tragedy_
‘Professor Fordney,’ said Sheriff Brown, of Lake Dalton, ‘I came to New York to ask your help in clearing up the murder of Horace Perkins at Luckley Lodge.’
‘Sit down and tell me about it,’ invited Fordney.
‘The family chauffeur, returning from the station at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve, found Perkins lying in a field, five yards off the Lodge drive, with his skull bashed in.’
‘He telephoned me immediately and I instructed him to see that nothing was disturbed. Arriving fifteen minutes later, I personally examined the ground so no clues would be destroyed.
‘The _only_ footprints to be found were six of Perkins’s leading from the drive to the spot where he lay. Around the body were a number of deep impressions about two inches square. It had been snowing all day until half an hour before the discovery of Perkins.
‘Leading away from the body and ending at the main road, two hundred yards distant, were four lines of these same impressions, about three and a half feet apart in length and about fourteen inches in width. In some places, however, they were badly run together.
‘A stranger in our parts is quickly noted and investigation failed to reveal a recent one. There were absolutely no other clues and I could find no motive for the crime. It has me stumped, Professor,’ concluded Brown.