III
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.
