Within a few hours, I had seen the manager of the building, arranged with him that the man should be allowed to stay, undertaken some small liability on his behalf, and seen the bailiffs and secured from them the return of a part of the beautiful furniture and silver which they had seized for a paltry debt of some twenty-five pounds.
“You’re a fool to do it,” said the manager with a gesture. “I tell you flatly, I’ve investigated and he has no friends, no relatives; he knows nobody, nobody knows him, he’s got no money, he’s down and out and a sick man into the bargain.”
My answer was to send for a doctor I knew. He came and examined the slobbering, vacant-looking man I had known in better days.
“He’ll be dead in three weeks,” he declared.
So I had to get to work quickly. I went down into his flat and examined everything in it. Nothing interested me except an old portmanteau, which was crammed full of old letters — the stamps on which, at least I thought, were worth enough to keep him for three weeks. I examined these letters, and during that and the following two days, I wrote some scores of letters to people who had written to him, asking them for information. I did not receive a single reply. Truly, I thought, MacDougall is broke and friendless.
But there was one thing more that had attracted my attention.
Among a heap of rubbish I found an old dirty blank check. What was it doing there? Search as I would, I could find no check book, nor a passbook, nor anything else that would give me the smallest clew to work upon. Still I could not understand that blank check, old and torn as it was. So I acted on it.
Walking into the branch of the bank concerned, I asked to see the manager. I asked him if James MacDougall had an account with them. At first I could get no information, then came the guarded news that there was such an account, but that MacDougall was dead, and who was I?
“On the contrary, MacDougall is very much alive,” I said. “and” — taking a leap in the dark — “I want also to see his deed box.”
The manager looked at me shrewdly and inquired:
“Where’s your authority?”
I told him my story, but he was stubborn. So I returned to the flats, saw a solicitor, and in a few minutes a power of attorney had been made out in my name. I returned to the bank and the deed box was produced.
But I had no key to open it, and it was only after a long argument that, at length, I was permitted to have it forced open in the manager’s presence.
Inside were securities valued at nearly seven thousand pounds, together with a passbook denoting another account containing funds belonging to the man whom a day or two ago had been at the door of the workhouse. From this point, the — I hardly dare call it an investigation — went on, and the end of tin’s side of the story was that I placed MacDougall in a home of his own, provided him with medical attention, and two manservants to look after him — and he lived for some months.
Then on his death came Sam Crockett with a will made out in his favor by James MacDougall. He went to the solicitor, who had never heard of nor seen him until that day. The solicitor got hold of me. We conferred and we decided not to admit the will without finding out something more about Mr. Crockett.
The facts as I have reported them earlier in this article came slowly. From that point they came even more slowly, but at last I was able to present a true story which caused Mr. Crockett to disappear hurriedly when we faced him with police interference.
He had met old MacDougall at the “Old Ship” Hotel. The old man, without a friend in the world, was making a habit of putting in his time almost entirely at this well known inn.
Crockett had watched him and made inquiries and the end of it was that he began to make himself agreeable. Slowly and very carefully, he worked his way into the old fellow’s confidence, plying him steadily with drink until, in his cups, MacDougall was at his mercy.
First Crockett abstracted his checkbook and other personal papers; then he worked on until he had removed every shred of identification; then he tried to induce him to sign the will in his favor. But he had been too anxious. MacDougall could not have been so drunk as he appeared at that time, and he refused with scorn to do anything of the kind. What actually he said to the crook will never be known, but such was the effect of his expressed contempt that the crook slipped something into his glass, took him home on that bitterly cold night, robbed him, and went home to forge his signature quite sure in his own mind, that in the morning MacDougall would be found dead in the street.
That is the story. It does not pretend to deal with the adventures of a detective in his business of searching for crooks, nor does it tell of the spectacular episodes in the life of a wrong ’un of international repute. It is merely a true tale of what has happened at Hove and which might well have happened to any man.
A torn and dirty blank check, an old man with one foot in the grave — and Slippery Sam, the slimiest scoundrel I have ever known.