Percival Bland's Proxy and The Missing Mortgagee

By R. Austin Freeman

These are two short stories from the collection THE GREAT PORTRAIT MYSTERY: "PERCIVAL BLAND'S PROXY" and "THE MISSING MORTGAGEE", wherein the brilliant medical investigator, Dr. Thorndyke, solves murderous crimes.

Percival Bland was an uncommon criminal. He knew that his continual passing of counterfeit banknotes would eventually catch up with him, so he had a plan--precautions against the inevitable catastrophe.We can understand why he has created an alternate persona, Robert Lindsay, using disguises and renting two places of residence.No one seems to notice that he and his "cousin" Robert never are at their respective homes simultaneously, nor are they at home when the other visits, nor does anyone see the resemblance of their facial appearance under the makeup.But why does he buy human bones at auction? The lot was described in the catalog as "a complete set of human osteology" but they were not an ordinary "student's set," for the bones of the hands and feet, instead of being strung together on cat-gut, were united by their original ligaments and were "of an unsavoury brown colour."What does he want with those moldy bones? He has a nefarious plan, but it does not fool Dr. Thorndyke.

After Dr. Thorndyke solved the case of Percival Bland, the doctor was called in by a life insurance company to investigate another case. There was apparently no doubt that Thomas Elton, a friendless, poverty-stricken artist, had fallen from the top of the overhanging cliff onto the beach. Now, one would suppose with the evidence of this fall of about a hundred and fifty feet, the smashed face and broken neck, there was not much room for doubt as to the cause of death.But Thorndyke indeed has his doubts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Booklassic
• Release date: Jun 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9789635267460

R. Austin Freeman

R. Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was a British author of detective stories. A pioneer of the inverted detective story, in which the reader knows from the start who committed the crime, Freeman is best known as the creator of the “medical jurispractitioner” Dr. John Thorndyke. First introduced in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), the brilliant forensic investigator went on to star in dozens of novels and short stories over the next decades. 

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978-963-526-746-0

Preface to the Feedbooks Edition

These two short stories were published in the collection THE GREAT PORTRAIT MYSTERY in 1918.  They were the only two stories in that collection which featured the author's favorite character, the brilliant medical investigator, Dr. Thorndyke. The author explained his modus operandi for the writing of his series of stories featuring Dr. Thorndyke in the original preface to his 1909 compilation called Dr. Thorndyke's Cases, wherein he says:

The stories in this collection, inasmuch as they constitute a somewhat new departure in this class of literature, require a few words of introduction. The primary function of all fiction is to furnish entertainment to the reader, and this fact has not been lost sight of. But the interest of so-called 'detective' fiction is, I believe, greatly enhanced by a careful adherence to the probable, and a strict avoidance of physical impossibilities; and, in accordance with this belief, I have been scrupulous in confining myself to authentic facts and practicable methods. The stories have, for the most part, a medico-legal motive, and the methods of solution described in them are similar to those employed in actual practice by medical jurists. The stories illustrate, in fact, the application to the detection of crime of the ordinary methods of scientific research. I may add that the experiments described have in all cases been performed by me, and that the micro-photographs are, of course, from the actual specimens.

The compiler of this book for Project Gutenberg Australia noted that the original book had these two short stories in the wrong order, putting The Missing Mortgagee before Percival Bland's Proxy although the Mortgagee story actually refers to the Proxy story as though it had already occurred.  Therefore, we have reversed the order of these two stories to put them in the correct temporal sequence.

Part 1

PERCIVAL BLAND'S PROXY

Chapter 1

An Uncommon Criminal

Mr. Percival Bland was a somewhat uncommon type of criminal. In the first place he really had an appreciable amount of common-sense. If he had only had a little more, he would not have been a criminal at all. As it was, he had just sufficient judgment to perceive that the consequences of unlawful acts accumulate as the acts are repeated; to realise that the criminal's position must, at length, become untenable; and to take what he considered fair precautions against the inevitable catastrophe.

But in spite of these estimable traits of character and the precautions aforesaid, Mr. Bland found himself in rather a tight place and with a prospect of increasing tightness. The causes of this uncomfortable tension do not concern us, and may be dismissed with the remark, that, if one perseveringly distributes flash Bank of England notes among the money-changers of the Continent, there will come a day of reckoning when those notes are tendered to the exceedingly knowing old lady who lives in Threadneedle Street.

Mr. Bland considered uneasily the approaching storm-cloud as he raked over the miscellaneous property in the Sale-rooms of Messrs. Plimpton. He was a confirmed frequenter of auctions, as was not unnatural, for the criminal is essentially a gambler. And criminal and gambler have one quality in common: each hopes to get something of value without paying the market price for it.

So Percival turned over the dusty oddments and his own difficulties at one and the same time. The vital questions were: When would the storm burst? And would it pass by the harbour of refuge that he bad been at such pains to construct? Let us inspect that harbour of refuge.

A quiet flat in the pleasant neighbourhood of Battersea bore a name-plate inscribed, Mr. Robert Lindsay; and the tenant was known to the porter and the char woman who attended to the flat, as a fair-haired gentle man who was engaged in the book trade as a travelling agent, and was consequently a good deal away from home. Now Mr. Robert Lindsay bore a distinct resemblance to Percival Bland; which was not surprising seeing that they were first cousins (or, at any rate, they said they were; and we may presume that they knew). But they were not very much alike. Mr. Lindsay had flaxen, or rather sandy, hair; Mr. Bland's hair was black. Mr. Bland had a mole under his left eye; Mr. Lindsay had no mole under his eye— but carried one in a small box in his waistcoat pocket.

At somewhat rare intervals the Cousins called on one another; but they had the very worst of luck, for neither of them ever seemed to find the other at home. And what was even more odd was that whenever Mr. Bland spent an evening at home in his lodgings over the oil shop in Bloomsbury, Mr. Lindsay's flat was empty; and as sure as Mr. Lindsay was at home in his flat so surely were Mr. Bland's lodgings vacant for the time being. It was a queer coincidence, if anyone had noticed it; but nobody ever did.

However, if Percival saw little of his cousin, it was not a case of out of sight, out of mind. On the contrary; so great was his solicitude for the latter's welfare that he not only had made a will constituting him his executor and sole legatee, but he had actually insured his life for no less a sum than three thousand pounds; and this will, together with the insurance policy, investment securities and other necessary documents, he had placed in the custody of a highly respectable solicitor. All of which did him great credit. It