Adventure Magazine Cover, October 1911 — page 168: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

T1144 letters, and he dated it with his own dating- stamp, and put it with his lot ‘To be an- swered.’ Can anything be more convincing of Fiske’s good faith?”’ “And yet,” said Bert Bayliss, “it 7s a faked letter, and George Fiske’s the mur- derer of Richard Hemmingway!”’ “My dear sir, what do you mean?” “Just what I say. Richard Hemming- way never saw this letter!” | ‘Can you prove that?” “T can. Look at the envelope closely with this lens, in a strong light. What do you see between the letters of Mr. Hem- mingway’s name?”’ ‘“‘T see’”’—the Inspector peered closer— “T see faint pencil-marks.”’ “Can you make out what they spell?” ‘““No — yes—‘G-e-o’ — is it ‘George Fiske’ ?” “Tt is, though not all the letters are dis- cernible. Fiske wrote this letter on Sunday and mailed it on Sunday, but—he addressed it to himself, mot to his employer.” “Why?” exclaimed Mr. Garson in amazement. “Listen. He addressed it with a very soft pencil to himself, and traced the address very lightly. It reached his boarding-house Monday morning, of course, and then he erased the pencil-marks and boldly wrote Mr. Hemmingway’s name in ink. Then he cut off the end, in precisely the way Mr. Hemmingway opens his letters, and put the whole thing in his pocket. All day he car- ried it in his pocket (I am reconstructing this affair as it must have happened), and at four o’clock he went home with the missive still there. “Late Monday night he returned. After the three visitors, had left, he strangled Mr. Hemmingway. You know he’s an athlete, and his employer was a frail old man. “And then he used the rubber stamp on his own letter and tucked it into the bunch of ‘To be answered.’ Then he rifled the safe, with Mr. Hemmingway’s own keys, turned off all the lights but one and swiftly and silently went home to bed. The rest you know.” ‘Mr. Bayliss, I can scarcely believe this!” said Inspector Garson, fairly gasping for breath. ‘“What, you can’t believe it when the villain has written his own name as damn- ing evidence against himself?”’ Adventure “It must be,” said the Inspector, again scrutinizing the faint trace of pencil-marks. “But why did he do it?”’ ‘‘Because he wanted to be executor and thus be able to convert into cash the securi- ties he has stolen.”’ “He returned those.” “Only a few. Oh, it was a clever and deep-laid scheme! Fiske has quantities of bonds and other valuable papers entirely unaccounted for and which, as sole executor, he can cash at his leisure, all unknown to any one.” “Flow did you discover this?” “By the simplest clue. I chanced to no- tice on Mr. Hemmingway’s desk a pencil, freshly sharpened, but sharpened in a to- tally different way from those sharpened by the man himself. I looked at all the other pencils on his desk, at the one taken from his pocket and at one in his bedroom—they are all sharpened in exactly the same way, with numerous long careful shaves, produc- ing a whittled pyramid. The pencil I spoke of—here it is—is sharpened by only five strong, clean cuts, making a short exposure of cut wood, quite different from the long point of wood in the others. Then I looked in the waste-basket, which at your orders had not been touched since the discovery of the crime, and on top I found the chips and lead-dust of this very pencil. They were on top of some torn envelopes whose post- marks proved they had come in Monday evening’s mail, which reaches the Hemming- way house about six-thirty. Hence, who- ever sharpened that pencil did it after six- thirty o’clock Monday night, and before the discovery of Mr. Hemmingway’s dead body.” Mr. Garson listened breathlessly. ‘‘And then?”’ he said. ‘“‘And then,” went on Bayliss, “I looked around for some pencils sharpened like that, and found several on and in Fiske’s desk in the library. The pencil might have been borrowed from Fiske’s desk, but it was sharpened right there at Mr. Hemmingway’s desk after half-past six o’clock. Fiske, as you know, testified that he left at four and did not return until Tuesday morning.”’ BAYLISS’ deductions were true. Confronted suddenly with the story and with the traced envelope, Fiske broke down completely and confessed all. He had been planning it for weeks, and had CO MICLOOKS (©