A day later Mr. Snyder sat in his office reading a typewritten report.
It appeared to be of a humorous nature, for, as he read, chuckles escaped
him. Finishing the last sheet he threw his head back and laughed heartily.
The manuscript had not been intended by its author for a humorous effort.
What Mr. Snyder had been reading was the first of Elliott Oakes' reports
from the Excelsior. It read as follows:
I am sorry to be unable to report any real progress. I have formed several
theories which I will put forward later, but at present I cannot say that
I am hopeful.
Directly I arrived here I sought out Mrs. Pickett, explained who I was,
and requested her to furnish me with any further information which might
be of service to me. She is a strange, silent woman, who impressed me as
having very little intelligence. Your suggestion that I should avail myself
of her assistance seems more curious than ever, now that I have seen her.
The whole affair seems to me at the moment of writing quite inexplicable.
Assuming that this Captain Gunner was murdered, there appears to have been
no motive for the crime whatsoever. I have made careful inquiries about
him, and find that he was a man of fifty-five; had spent nearly forty years
of his life at sea, the last dozen in command of his own ship; was of a
somewhat overbearing disposition, though with a fund of rough humour; had
travelled all over the world, and had been an inmate of the Excelsior for
about ten months. He had a small annuity, and no other money at all, which
disposes of money as the motive for the crime.
In my character of James Burton, a retired ship's chandler, I have mixed
with the other boarders, and have heard all they have to say about the
affair. I gather that the deceased was by no means popular. He appears
to have had a bitter tongue, and I have not met one man who seems to regret
his death. On the other hand, I have heard nothing which would suggest
that he had any active and violent enemies. He was simply the unpopular
boarder--there is always one in every boarding-house--but nothing more.
I have seen a good deal of the man who shared his room--another sea captain,
named Muller. He is a big, silent person, and it is not easy to get him
to talk. As regards the death of Captain Gunner he can tell me nothing.
It seems that on the night of the tragedy he was away at Portsmouth with
some friends. All I have got from him is some information as to Captain
Gunner's habits, which leads nowhere. The dead man seldom drank, except
at night when he would take some whisky. His head was not strong, and a
little of the spirit was enough to make him semi-intoxicated, when he would
be hilarious and often insulting. I gather that Muller found him a difficult
roommate, but he is one of those placid persons who can put up with anything.
He and Gunner were in the habit of playing draughts together every night
in their room, and Gunner had a harmonica which he played frequently. Apparently,
he was playing it very soon before he died, which is significant, as seeming
to dispose of the idea of suicide.
As I say, I have one or two theories, but they are in a very nebulous state.
The most plausible is that on one of his visits to India--I have ascertained
that he made several voyages there--Captain Gunner may in some way have
fallen foul of the natives. The fact that he certainly died of the poison
of an Indian snake supports this theory. I am making inquiries as to the
movements of several Indian sailors who were here in their ships at the
time of the tragedy.
I have another theory. Does Mrs. Pickett know more about this affair than
she appears to? I may be wrong in my estimate of her mental qualities.
Her apparent stupidity may be cunning. But here again, the absence of motive
brings me up against a dead wall. I must confess that at present I do not
see my way clearly. However, I will write again shortly.
Mr. Snyder derived the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the substance
of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration
which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told
him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited
young man. Whatever might be the result of this investigation, it would
teach him the virtue of patience. He wrote his assistant a short note:
Dear Oakes,
Your report received. You certainly seem to have got the hard case which,
I hear, you were pining for. Don't build too much on plausible motives
in a case of this sort. Fauntleroy, the London murderer, killed a woman
for no other reason than that she had thick ankles. Many years ago, I myself
was on a case where a man murdered an intimate friend because of a dispute
about a bet. My experience is that five murderers out of ten act on the
whim of the moment, without anything which, properly speaking, you could
call a motive at all.
Yours very cordially,
Paul Snyder
P. S. I don't think much of your Pickett theory. However, you're in charge.
I wish you luck.
|
