American Sherlocks by Nick Rennison (reading like a writer .TXT) 📕

and the handsome housekeeper, and insisted that the suspicion was a grave injustice to the woman. The displeasure of his benefactor was thus allayed. Later, however, the woman openly declared that the young man had married her; and that since, under the fear of discovery, which might mean the loss of his position in the house of his adopted father, he had attempted her life by poison. She even sought the police with a view of making her charge public, when Dr Haslam, to save scandal and prevent a rumour of his disturbed domestic relations from becoming known in the neighbourhood, intervened as a peacemaker.

‘The strain upon the old man resulted in a fit of illness, during which time a reconciliation was apparently effected between himself and his adopted son. Upon this same afternoon Dr Haslam, feeling better, accompanied Dr Sadler downstairs and went with him to the stable, where some paving had been finished in the carriage room. The coachman, who was present, left at that moment, and the stable-hands were absent. The time was propitious for the crime. A fiendish opportunity for concealing the deed appealed to the young man, and he hastened to take advantage of it. Striking his adopted father down from behind by a blow with a hatchet, he killed him instantly. It is believed, and there is evidence to sustain the theory, that he was assisted in this work by the wretched woman who was to suffer death so shortly herself.

‘Secure now in the possession of the premises, and while the servants supposed that Dr Haslam was in the retirement of his chamber, still suffering from the indisposition which had kept him within doors for the previous week, Dr Sadler erected an infernal trap designed to destroy his unhappy accomplice. This consisted of a framework made of lathing, arranged to carry a gun at the proper height and discharge it by means of a wire. The whole was concealed by a green cloth thrown over the structure. The wire, which connected with the set trigger, passed beneath a table before the muzzle of the concealed weapon attached to a book that was placed thereon. The terrible contrivance was erected so as to make failure impossible, and well calculated to deceive and mislead by its results. A chair and a sofa were placed before the table so that the intended victim, to reach the book, must of necessity present herself directly in front of the masked weapon. His trap secure, the murderer set it when alone, and, descending to the lower floor of the house, he remained in the company of the butler while Mrs Sands was carelessly requested to fetch him a book lying on the table in the study above. The woman obeyed and met her instant death.

‘Frightened by the explosion, the butler readily obeyed the injunction of his master to wait below while the cause of the disturbance was investigated by himself; and, hurrying to the scene of his work. Dr Sadler removed the deadly mechanism from before the body of his victim, and calmly asserted that the deed was done by his adopted father.

‘Here follows a statement which must beggar human belief. When Dr Haslam was murdered in the stable every facility was at hand for a remarkable concealment of the body. It immediately suggested itself to the unnatural murderer, if, indeed, he had not reasoned it out before and beguiled the old man to the spot for the very purpose of perpetrating the crime. A large box-mould, used by the workmen in mixing the cement for a broken gate-post, lay in the stable. Its form was strangely appropriate for the fell purpose for which it was subsequently used, and its bottom was well covered with the liquid mixture. Into this the murderer threw the body, and, covering it carefully with the sand and cement that lay about, smoothed the plastic mass in the mould.

‘Here the body lay within the hardening cement until the following day, when the murderer had the now solid block removed from the box. The workmen who had laid the cement floor of the stable were recalled, and the block was erected at the entrance to the yard.

‘The unravelling of the mystery attached to the murder of the woman and the discovery of the appalling crime which makes this murder distinctive were due to the marvellous detective skill of Inspector Paul. This efficient officer, from the first, was dissatisfied with the conclusion that Dr Haslam was guilty of the killing of his housekeeper. The high character of the doctor was at variance with both the crime and the guilty flight.

‘The strange hiding-place selected by the murderer for the body of his victim was discovered in a manner to reflect lasting credit upon the deductive mind that reasoned it out, and will rank Inspector Paul among the safest of our secret guardians of the public safety. During a visit to the house in Banning Street he happened carelessly upon a book of Oriental travel pierced by a piece of brass wire. Remembering that this was similar to the wire which enveloped the breech of the fatal shotgun, he was enabled to connect it with the broken fragments of the trap found in the stable, and later to put together the theory which the facts proved to be true. But in the book in question he found a well-thumbed chapter which told a grim story of a method of torture in Persia; it detailed a practice on the part of the cruel authorities of enveloping criminals in a mould of plaster of Paris, or cement, and letting the substance set about their bodies until the unfortunate victims were lost, entombed forever in a solid mass. Inquiry developed that the book was a favourite one of Dr Sadler’s.

‘Dr Jerome Sadler killed himself by taking prussic acid in the library of the Banning Street residence late yesterday afternoon, immediately following the demolition of the gate-post by the authorities. The coroner will