The Adventures of Dr. Thorndyke (The Singing Bone). R. Austin Freeman

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ stretcher stood on the floor by one wall, its grim burden still hidden by the tarpaulin, and the hand-bag and umbrella lay on a large box, together with the battered frame of a pair of spectacles from which the glasses had fallen out.

      “Were these spectacles found by the body?” Thorndyke inquired.

      “Yes,” replied the station-master. “They were close to the head and the glass was scattered about on the ballast.”

      Thorndyke made a note in his pocket-book, and then, as he inspector removed the tarpaulin, he glanced down on the corpse, lying limply on the stretcher and looking grotesquely horrible with its displaced head and distorted limbs. For fully a minute he remained silently stooping over the uncanny object, on which the inspector was now throwing the light of a large lantern; then he stood up and said quietly to me: “I think we can eliminate two out of the three hypotheses.”

      The inspector looked at him quickly, and was about to ask a question, when his attention was diverted by the travelling-case which Thorndyke had laid on a shelf and now opened to abstract a couple of pairs of dissecting forceps.

      “We’ve no authority to make a post mortem, you know,” said the inspector.

      “No, of course not,” said Thorndyke. “I am merely going to look into the mouth.” With one pair of forceps he turned back the lip and, having scrutinized its inner surface, closely examined the teeth.

      “May I trouble you for your lens, Jervis?” he said; and, as I handed him my doublet ready opened, the inspector brought the lantern close to the dead face and leaned forward eagerly. In his usual systematic fashion, Thorndyke slowly passed the lens along the whole range of sharp, uneven teeth, and then, bringing it back to the centre, examined with more minuteness the upper incisors. At length, very delicately, he picked out with his forceps some minute object from between two of the upper front teeth and held it in the focus of the lens. Anticipating his next move, I took a labelled microscope-slide from the case and handed it to him together with a dissecting needle, and, as he transferred the object to the slide and spread it out with the needle, I set up the little microscope on the shelf.

      “A drop of Farrant and a cover-glass, please, Jervis,” said Thorndyke.

      I handed him the bottle, and, when he had let a drop of the mounting fluid fall gently on the object and put on the cover-slip, he placed the slide on the stage of the microscope and examined it attentively.

      Happening to glance at the inspector, I observed on his countenance a faint grin, which he politely strove to suppress when he caught my eye.

      “I was thinking, sir,” he said apologetically, “that it’s a bit off the track to be finding out what he had for dinner. He didn’t die of unwholesome feeding.”

      Thorndyke looked up with a smile. “It doesn’t do, inspector, to assume that anything is off the track in an inquiry of this kind. Every fact must have some significance, you know.”

      “I don’t see any significance in the diet of a man who has had his head cut off,” the inspector rejoined defiantly.

      “Don’t you?” said Thorndyke. “Is there no interest attaching to the last meal of a man who has met a violent death? These crumbs, for instance, that are scattered over the dead man’s waistcoat. Can we learn nothing from them?”

      “I don’t see what you can learn,” was the dogged rejoinder.

      Thorndyke picked off the crumbs, one by one, with his forceps, and having deposited them on a slide, inspected them, first with the lens and then through the microscope.

      “I learn,” said he, “that shortly before his death, the deceased partook of some kind of whole-meal biscuits, apparently composed partly of oatmeal.”

      “I call that nothing,” said the inspector. “The question that we have got to settle is not what refreshments had the deceased been taking, but what was the cause of his death: did he commit suicide? was he killed by accident? or was there any foul play?”

      “I beg your pardon,” said Thorndyke, “the questions that remain to be settled are, who killed the deceased and with what motive? The others are already answered as far as I am concerned.”

      The inspector stared in sheer amazement not unmixed with incredulity.

      “You haven’t been long coming to a conclusion, sir,” he said.

      “No, it was a pretty obvious case of murder,” said Thorndyke. “As to the motive, the deceased was a diamond merchant and is believed to have had a quantity of stones about his person. I should suggest that you search the body.”

      The inspector gave vent to an exclamation of disgust. “I see,” he said. “It was just a guess on your part. The dead man was a diamond merchant and had valuable property about him; therefore he was murdered.” He drew himself up, and, regarding Thorndyke with stern reproach, added: “But you must understand, sir, that this is a judicial inquiry, not a prize competition in a penny paper. And, as to searching the body, why, that is what I principally came for.” He ostentatiously turned his back on us and proceeded systematically to turn out the dead man’s pockets, laying the articles, as he removed them, on the box by the side of the hand-bag and umbrella.

      While he was thus occupied, Thorndyke looked over the body generally, paying special attention to the soles of the boots, which, to the inspector’s undissembled amusement, he very thoroughly examined with the lens.

      “I should have thought, sir, that his feet were large enough to be seen with the naked eye,” was his comment; “but perhaps,” he added, with a sly glance at the station master, “you’re a little near-sighted.”

      Thorndyke chuckled good-humouredly, and, while the officer continued his search, he looked over the articles that had already been laid on the box. The purse and pocket book he naturally left for the inspector to open, but the reading-glasses, pocket-knife and card-case and other small pocket articles were subjected to a searching scrutiny. The inspector watched him out of the corner of his eye with furtive amusement; saw him hold up the glasses to the light to estimate their refractive power, peer into the tobacco pouch, open the cigarette book and examine the watermark of the paper, and even inspect the contents of the silver match-box.

      “What might you have expected to find in his tobacco pouch?” the officer asked, laying down a bunch of keys from the dead man’s pocket.

      “Tobacco,” Thorndyke replied stolidly; “but I did not expect to find fine-cut Latakia. I don’t remember ever having seen pure Latakia smoked in cigarettes.”

      “You do take an interest in things, sir,” said the inspector, with a side glance at the stolid station-master.

      “I do,” Thorndyke agreed; “and I note that there are no diamonds among this collection.”

      “No, and we don’t know that he had any about him; but there’s a gold watch and chain, a diamond scarf-pin, and a purse containing”—he opened it and tipped out its contents into his hand—“twelve pounds in gold. That doesn’t look much like robbery, does it? What do you say to the murder theory now?”

      “My opinion is unchanged,” said Thorndyke, “and I should like to examine the spot where the body was found. Has the engine been inspected?” he added, addressing the station-master.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ