"Then how?"
"As to the age and general good health, that was marked by the condition of the hair — the human hair — I found in the cap. The length of the hairs — none longer than three inches — suggests a man.
The hairs' diameter also affirms that they came from an adult male. The hairs were healthy, as a microscopic examination of the roots confirmed. This suggests that the owner of the cap also was healthy. The relative youth of the wearer I deduce from the lack of gray hairs among the thirty-six samples I found."
"European stock?" Barnett said. "Horse racing?"
Professor Moriarty tossed the cap on the table with a slight spin. "Notice the shape it takes," he said. "That is because it has been blocked by the addition of a folded-up newspaper around the inner liner to make it fit more comfortably. After repeated wearing it has taken up the shape of the wearer's head. Which, you will notice, is long and comparatively slender. The man possesses a typically Slavic skull, from which I deduce that he is probably Eastern European. Professor Alphonse Bertillon, the noted developer of the Bertillon Anthropometric System, would disagree. He marks the long, narrow head as the trait of the congenital criminal. But then, Professor Bertillon is French.
"The size of the man I deduce from the size of the head. I could be quite wrong, of course, that there is an average about these things. The famous bell-shaped distribution curve shows up quite often in human affairs."
"That leaves horse racing," Barnett said.
"The paper folded up inside the crown," Moriarty told him dryly, "is the turf odds page of the Sporting Times."
"Ah," Barnett said. "Quite so," Moriarty agreed.
"Is there nothing further?" Barnett asked. Impressive as the professor's deductive display had been, he was right in saying that it didn't take them anywhere.
"One thing only," Moriarty said. "And it's more in your line than mine." He took a piece of pasteboard from his desk and flipped it over to Barnett. "This was stuck in the hatband."
Barnett examined the fragment carefully. It was roughly square, about two inches on a side, and appeared to have been torn along one edge. There was a slight reddish tinge to it, but whether it was the natural color or the result of having been kept in a hatband, Barnett couldn't tell. One side was blank, and on the other two numbers and an unintelligible word were scrawled. The numbers were printed in the European fashion; in the upper left-hand corner was "1143" and toward the bottom was "2/5/0." The word, which was between the numbers, was completely unreadable to Barnett and could have been English, French, Russian, or Arabic as far as he could tell. He was fairly sure it wasn't Chinese, but that was about the only possibility he could eliminate. The tear, with the billet held so that the numbers were readable, was along the right-hand side.
"This may be in my line," Barnett said, turning it over and over, "but I haven't the slightest idea what it is."
"There are several possibilities," Moriarty said, "but the most probable is that it is a pawn ticket."
"I see," Barnett said. "I appreciate your compliment as to my experience in this area. However, I would appreciate any facts with which you can supply me."
"The top number," Moriarty said, "would correspond to the number of the item pawned in the pawnbroker's ledger. The bottom number is the amount loaned. The scrawl in the middle is certainly a description of the item, for those who can read it. I, unfortunately, am not among that favored few."
"What pawnshop is it from?" Barnett asked.
"That is the problem," Moriarty said. "Most licensed pawnbrokers have their name and location printed or stamped on their tickets. But there must be thousands of unlicensed brokers in the city — small tradesmen who take a few items in pledge just as a sideline and don't want to pay the yearly licensing fee. The lack of a name on the ticket would indicate a more informal shop, but the high ledger number argues otherwise. The owner would appear to be from the continent, but that is small help."
"It might be a clerk's handwriting," Barnett suggested.
"Ah! You followed that," Moriarty said. "Good, good. No, it is probably the owner, judging by the size of the pledge. Anything over ten shillings is usually only given at the owner's discretion, although there's no hard and fast rule."
"You want me to find the shop?" Barnett asked.
"Yes," Moriarty said. "See what you can discover of the pledger; he may be an acquaintance of the owner, or they may have taken down his name and address — although that's doubtful. Find out what the pledged item is. That may be especially helpful."
"Okay," Barnett said, putting the ticket carefully in his wallet. "I'll start tomorrow morning."
-
And so he did. For the next week, Barnett wandered the streets of London, from Chelsea to Greenwich, from Finsbury to Lambeth, seeking out pawnbrokers and moneylenders. He had always thought pawnbrokers to be a secretive lot, but they became quite loquacious, he found, when you talked to them about something other than borrowing money. Unfortunately, none of them could identify the ticket or suggest whence it came. They did verify that the billet was, indeed, a pawn ticket, and an old man in Chelsea even translated the unreadable script. "It's what we calls back-writing," he said. "Don't know why we do it. It's dying out now, but it used to be the custom in this here profession."
"What does it say?" Barnett asked.
"Musical box, it says," the old man told him. "Must be something extraordinary in the way of musical boxes to pull two-pounds-five as a pledge."
Barnett reported the translation to Moriarty that evening, received a grunt in reply, and continued the search the next morning. It was two days later, on Pigott Street in Limehouse, that Barnett succeeded in tracing the ticket to its originator.
Starkey & Sons, Money Lent on Pledge, looked like a small shop from the narrow storefront. But inside it went back for quite a long way. And there were two staircases, one leading upstairs and another down. The establishment was crowded with the most fanciful collection of items Barnett had ever seen. "These are all pledges?" he asked, fingering a stuffed boar's head.
"Not at all, sir," the aged proprietor said. "The goods taken in pledge are all downstairs. We can't sell them in the shop, you see, even after the year-and-a-week. They have to be offered at auction. It's the law. These are all items we've picked up over the years at auctions, or the like, ourselves. My old father sir, bless his heart, had a sense of whimsy." He pointed to a glass-fronted oak case along the wall. "That contraption of leather tubing in the corner is called a serpent, sir. It is a musical instrument used at one time in military bands and the like. It fell out of favor during the reign of George the Fourth, I believe. Next to it is a stuffed and shellacked sand shark. On the shelf below is a collection of crocheted butterflies."
"I take it your father was the original Starkey," Barnett said, "and you are the son?"
"My father," the old man told him, "was the original son. I am merely the original grandson. Feel free to look around, sir. Fascinating incunabula — and a dried lizardskin collection — upstairs. If you see anything you like…"
"Actually," Barnett said, "as fascinating as I find this store, I came in to see whether you could identify this pledge." He handed the old man the ticket.
The old man looked up at Barnett suspiciously. "Of course I can identify it," he said. "It's mine, ain't it?"
"I didn't know," Barnett said, cautiously suppressing his feeling of elation. "Are you sure it's yours?"
"I should know my own ticket, I suppose," the old man said, adding hostility to suspicion. "You have something to say about it?"
"Why isn't your name on it?" Barnett asked. "I should think that an old, established firm like yours would have printed tickets."