The First R. Austin Freeman MEGAPACK ®. R. Austin Freeman

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      “Have you started in practice here?” Thorndyke asked as we hurried along.

      “No, sir,” replied Dr. Hart; “I am an assistant. My principal is the police-surgeon, but he is out just now. It’s very good of you to come with me, sir.”

      “Tut, tut,” rejoined Thorndyke. “I am just coming to see that you do credit to my teaching. That looks like the house.”

      We had followed our guide into a side street, halfway down which we could see a knot of people clustered round a doorway. They watched us as we approached, and drew aside to let us enter. The woman whom we were following rushed into the passage with the same headlong haste with which she had traversed the streets, and so up the stairs. But as she neared the top of the flight she slowed down suddenly, and began to creep up on tiptoe with noiseless and hesitating steps. On the landing she turned to face us, and pointing a shaking forefinger at the door of the back room, whispered almost inaudibly, “She’s in there,” and then sank half-fainting on the bottom stair of the next flight.

      I laid my hand on the knob of the door, and looked back at Thorndyke. He was coming slowly up the stairs, closely scrutinizing floor, walls, and handrail as he came. When he reached the landing, I turned the handle, and we entered the room together, closing the door after us. The blind was still down, and in the dim, uncertain light nothing out of the common was, at first, to be seen. The shabby little room looked trim and orderly enough, save for a heap of cast-off feminine clothing piled upon a chair. The bed appeared undisturbed except by the half-seen shape of its occupant, and the quiet face, dimly visible in its shadowy corner, might have been that of a sleeper but for its utter stillness and for a dark stain on the pillow by its side.

      Dr. Hart stole on tiptoe to the bedside, while Thorndyke drew up the blind; and as the garish daylight poured into the room, the young surgeon fell back with a gasp of horror.

      “Good God!” he exclaimed; “poor creature! But this is a frightful thing, sir!”

      The light streamed down upon the white face of a handsome girl of twenty-five, a face peaceful, placid, and beautiful with the austere and almost unearthly beauty of the youthful dead. The lips were slightly parted, the eyes half closed and drowsy, shaded with sweeping lashes; and a wealth of dark hair in massive plaits served as a foil to the translucent skin.

      Our friend had drawn back the bedclothes a few inches, and now there was revealed, beneath the comely face, so serene and inscrutable, and yet so dreadful in its fixity and waxen pallor, a horrible, yawning wound that almost divided the shapely neck.

      Thorndyke looked down with stern pity at the plump white face.

      “It was savagely done,” said he, “and yet mercifully, by reason of its very savagery. She must have died without waking.”

      “The brute!” exclaimed Hart, clenching his fists and turning crimson with wrath. “The infernal cowardly beast! He shall hang! By God, he shall hang!” In his fury the young fellow shook his fists in the air, even as the moisture welled up into his eyes.

      Thorndyke touched him on the shoulder. “That is what we are here for, Hart,” said he. “Get out your notebook;” and with this he bent down over the dead girl.

      At the friendly reproof the young surgeon pulled himself together, and, with open notebook, commenced his investigation, while I, at Thorndyke’s request, occupied myself in making a plan of the room, with a description of its contents and their arrangements. But this occupation did not prevent me from keeping an eye on Thorndyke’s movements, and presently I suspended my labours to watch him as, with his pocket-knife, he scraped together some objects that he had found on the pillow.

      “What do you make of this?” he asked, as I stepped over to his side. He pointed with the blade to a tiny heap of what looked like silver sand, and, as I looked more closely, I saw that similar particles were sprinkled on other parts of the pillow.

      “Silver sand!” I exclaimed. “I don’t understand at all how it can have got there. Do you?”

      Thorndyke shook his head. “We will consider the explanation later,” was his reply. He had produced from his pocket a small metal box which he always carried, and which contained such requisites as cover-slips, capillary tubes, moulding wax, and other “diagnostic materials.” He now took from it a seed-envelope, into which he neatly shovelled the little pinch of sand with his knife. He had closed the envelope, and was writing a pencilled description on the outside, when we were startled by a cry from Hart.

      “Good God, sir! Look at this! It was done by a woman!”

      He had drawn back the bedclothes, and was staring aghast at the dead girl’s left hand. It held a thin tress of long, red hair.

      Thorndyke hastily pocketed his specimen, and, stepping round the little bedside table, bent over the hand with knitted brows. It was closed, though not tightly clenched, and when an attempt was made gently to separate the fingers, they were found to be as rigid as the fingers of a wooden hand. Thorndyke stooped yet more closely, and, taking out his lens, scrutinized the wisp of hair throughout its entire length.

      “There is more here than meets the eye at the first glance,” he remarked. “What say you, Hart?” He held out his lens to his quondam pupil, who was about to take it from him when the door opened, and three men entered. One was a police-inspector, the second appeared to be a plain-clothes officer, while the third was evidently the divisional surgeon.

      “Friends of yours, Hart?” inquired the latter, regarding us with some disfavour.

      Thorndyke gave a brief explanation of our presence to which the newcomer rejoined:

      “Well, sir, your locus standi here is a matter for the inspector. My assistant was not authorized to call in outsiders. You needn’t wait, Hart.”

      With this he proceeded to his inspection, while Thorndyke withdrew the pocket-thermometer that he had slipped under the body, and took the reading.

      The inspector, however, was not disposed to exercise the prerogative at which the surgeon had hinted; for an expert has his uses.

      “How long should you say she’d been dead, sir?” he asked affably.

      “About ten hours,” replied Thorndyke.

      The inspector and the detective simultaneously looked at their watches. “That fixes it at two o’clock this morning,” said the former. “What’s that, sir?”

      The surgeon was pointing to the wisp of hair in the dead girl’s hand.

      “My word!” exclaimed the inspector. “A woman, eh? She must be a tough customer. This looks like a soft job for you, sergeant.”

      “Yes,” said the detective. “That accounts for that box with the hassock on it at the head of the bed. She had to stand on them to reach over. But she couldn’t have been very tall.”

      “She must have been mighty strong, though,” said the inspector; “why, she has nearly cut the poor wench’s head off.” He moved round to the head of the bed, and, stooping over, peered down at the gaping wound. Suddenly he began to draw his hand over the pillow, and then rub his fingers together. “Why,” he exclaimed, “there’s sand on the pillow—silver sand! Now, how can that have come there?”

      The surgeon and the detective both came round to verify this discovery, and an earnest СКАЧАТЬ