Tracks in the Snow by Godfrey R. Benson — Read

Towards the end of November, 1896, I again saw Callaghan. I had some time before ascertained that he had returned to London, and I daresay it may appear to the reader strange that I should not immediately upon his return have sought him out and again compared notes with him. But (not to mention that I had no reason, so far, to set great store upon Callaghan's observations and theories) it must be remembered that I had received a very grave warning as to his possible character. It is a serious matter for a father of a family to enter into intimate relations with a gentleman who, according to an eminent specialist, is a homicidal lunatic. So I made first a few enquiries from acquaintances of his in regard to his character and recent proceedings. For a while I intended to put off seeing him till a time, which I was now unhappily compelled to foresee, when my wife and children would be safe out of the country. But in the end my enquiries and my wife's absolute conviction satisfied me that the idea of his lunacy was really, as I had at first supposed, quite unfounded and foolish.

Anyway, I at last invited Callaghan to stay for a couple of days in our new home. He accepted, but for one night only. He arrived in the afternoon full of his Parisian adventures and to a less extent of his detective researches. With these, or with an adorned version of them, he entertained me for an hour or so before dinner. It seems that his sudden departure for Paris was not altogether motiveless. He had, on his arrival in London, heard by some accident of a gentleman in Paris who was a correspondent and intimate of Thalberg. He had immediately conceived the notion of scraping acquaintance with this gentleman and using him as a means of information about Thalberg, and he was further drawn towards Paris by a fancy that he would like to study French methods of criminal investigation, into which, through the good offices of some friends of his, he thought he could get some insight. In the latter respect he was gratified. Now it seems that he had already begun before Peters' death to cherish the ambition of getting high employment in the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. So it came to pass that his studies in the science of criminal investigation generally, occupied more of his attention from that time till our present meeting than the particular investigation which had at first fascinated him. Moreover, before he had been long in Paris he discovered, to his huge amusement, that he was himself the subject of suspicion and of close observation, and without regard to how this might affect his cherished ambition of an appointment at Scotland Yard, he entered upon, and continued during three whole months, an elaborate scheme of mystification for the French officials who were observing him, and, through them, for that very Department in which he wished to fill a high place. Nevertheless, he had pursued ingenious enquiries in regard to the (as I still thought him) unfortunate Thalberg, for which purpose he paid several flying visits to London and elsewhere. The result of these enquiries he related to me, mingling it up with the tale of his other adventures in such a manner that it was hard for me to grasp what its importance might be. I was able to see that Callaghan had employed quite extraordinary ingenuity and pains in picking up the facts about Thalberg which he told me, but that very ingenuity struck me as ludicrously disproportionate to the importance of the facts which he had found, or was ever likely to find along this road. Thalberg was a solicitor in the City who had been in a small way of business, till the firm of which he was now the sole surviving partner began, a good many years before, to be employed by Vane-Cartwright. Vane-Cartwright got this firm appointed solicitors to a company which was formed to take over his original venture in the East, and he still continued to employ Thalberg from time to time upon private business of his own. Thalberg's family were interested in Eastern commerce, and he had correspondence with many persons in various parts of the far East. Years before he had transacted for Vane-Cartwright a good deal of correspondence of a nature so secret as to be unknown to his clerks, and in the course of this very year he had again returned to an employment of the like kind for someone or other. It appeared that it might have been upon an errand connected with this secret correspondence that he had come down to Long Wilton. Callaghan was much excited about a discovery which he had made that Thalberg had in January of this year been in correspondence with a personage in Madrid, telegraphing to him in a cipher employed by the Spanish Consulate in London, of which he was able to make use through an official in that Consulate, who had since been discharged for misconduct and was now in Paris. There was more of this nature as to the mysterious proceedings of Thalberg, but I cannot well remember how much Callaghan told me on that occasion, and I must observe that I have set down what he then told me as I understand it now. I was not able to understand it completely at the time owing to the fact that throughout his talk that afternoon Callaghan did not once allude to Vane-Cartwright by his name.