The Case of the Lost Foreigner

The Case of the Lost Foreigner

Martin Hewitt, visiting Vine Street police-station on an unrelated errand, learns that officers have picked up a dazed, injured young man—apparently a Frenchman—found wandering near Golden Square. The man shows terror at the sight of an uncut loaf of bread yet eats cut bread eagerly, and can only repeat the phrase "Je le nie!" ("I deny it!") along with meaningless fragments. Hewitt questions him in French but gets no coherent answer. A doctor diagnoses motor aphasia with agraphia: the man understands everything but cannot connect words to speech or writing. Given pen and paper, he cannot write his name, but idly sketches and scribbles. Hewitt notices the policeman found no watch, though the man's frayed waistcoat button-hole shows he normally carried one; his collar was torn away, and he had no hat, suggesting he'd just come from a nearby house. Hewitt has the police quietly place another whole loaf near the man; the Frenchman turns it upside-down, which calms him. Left alone with paper, the man mechanically sketches a horseshoe clock on the mantelpiece, then a dotted horseshoe, a captive balloon, a Highlander, a chimney with a basket-cowl, and finally a horse's head, before breaking down again. Hewitt pockets the sketches and sends for his friend Brett. Meeting Brett at Fitzroy Square, Hewitt explains that the sequence of images—horseshoe (with gaslight dots), balloon, and Highlander—corresponds to landmarks going up Tottenham Court Road (the Horse-shoe Hotel, a toy shop's advertising balloon, a tobacconist's wooden Highlander), and the basket-cowl chimney suggests a stable-yard nearby. Hewitt recalls only one such stable-yard fitting the description. There, a butcher's boy mentions an unvisited stable let to "some foreign baker." Hewitt picks the padlock and the two men search the shed, finding a baker's cart marked "Schuyler, Baker" containing a spring mattress, long French loaves wedged to hold something, and "plain cottage" loaves baked upside-down in batches. Cutting one open, Hewitt finds only bread, but suspects the batch is meant to conceal something. A man arrives, is seized after a struggle (drawing a knife), and bound. Hidden under hay they find another batch of inverted loaves. Papers on the prisoner, an Italian named Luigi, reveal an Anarchist plot: reversible acid-and-dynamite bombs hidden in loaves, to be planted right-side-up (arming them) around the city, using the padded cart to prevent premature detonation. The papers also mention a meeting to decide the "final punishment" of "the traitor Gerard," held by "comrade Pingard." Hewitt deduces the missing Frenchman is Gerard and that the meeting will be at the Bakunin Club, an unraided Anarchist haunt—confirmed when Luigi reacts guiltily to its name. Police quietly surround the club while Hewitt and Brett, disguised as shabby "comrades," talk their way past a woman housekeeper at the door, allowing officers to storm in. They capture two men and, through the housekeeper's frightened confession, learn the full story: Gerard, chosen to drive the bomb-cart, lost his nerve and wrote an anonymous tip-off letter to police naming the horse and cart's location, hoping to have the scheme foiled without betraying names. The letter was discovered before being sent; Gerard was confronted, could only stammer "Je le nie!", and was tortured by the Anarchists (near-strangled, threatened with a razor and knife) until he passed out repeatedly. Undecided on how to dispose of him, they moved him to comrades Jean and Emile Pingard's rooms in Henry Street, but a drunken Jean fell asleep and Gerard escaped, wandering the streets in the traumatized state in which he was found. That night, police intercept and arrest further Anarchists arriving at the club, netting what is called the largest such arrest in the country. Over dinner, Hewitt explains his full reasoning to Brett, including how Gerard's compulsive sketching mirrored a habitual walking route and betrayed the stable's location, and how the loaves were rigged with hidden dynamite charges sealed inside hollowed halves. The captured loaves are confirmed to contain dynamite, and the arrested conspirators receive severe sentences.

By Arthur Morrison · First published 1895 · Genre: Mystery, Detective Fiction, Adventure · 12,549 words

First lines

I have already said in more than one place that Hewitt's personal relations with the members of the London police force were of a cordial character. In the course of his work it has frequently been Hewitt's hap to learn of matters on which the police were glad of information, and that information was always passed on at once; and so long as no infringement of regulations or damage to public service were involved, Hewitt could always rely on a return in kind.

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The Case of the Lost Foreigner is listed on Textopian as a short story by Arthur Morrison, dated 1895 CE.

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mystery · detective · thriller · crime · investigation · suspense · intrigue · murder · loss · foreigner · travel · culture

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