THE WRITING IN BRAILLE
The girl was making tea on an electric stove when he came in.
“Hallo!” he said with a start. “I had forgotten you,” and she smiled.
“Tell me,” he asked quickly, “did Stuart have any cuff-links?”
She nodded and took a small packet from her table.
“The Commissioner forgot to send these on; they came in just after you
left,” she said.
He opened the paper. The links were of plain gold without crest or
monogram.
He took the enamel and diamond half-link from his pocket and inspected
it.
“What is that?” she asked. “Did you find it in----” She hesitated.
He nodded.
“I found it in his hand,” he said quietly.
“Then it is murder, you think?”
“I’m certain,” said he. “It will be most difficult to prove, and
unless a miracle happens, the villain who committed this crime will go
free.”
He opened the cupboard and took out the tray, adding to the collection
the two gold links and the half-link he had found in the dead man’s
hand.
“Nothing at all,” he said, shaking his head. Then he remembered he had
not examined the little roll of brown paper. “I don’t know what this
is; it was found in his pocket.”
He flattened it out on the table, and the girl came to the opposite
side and bent over, looking at the paper as he smoothed it out. It was
a strip about four inches long and two wide.
“Nothing written here,” he said, and turned it over. “Nor here. I’ll
have it photographed to-morrow.”
“One moment,” she said quickly, and took the paper from his hand,
passing the tips of her delicate fingers over its surface.
He saw her face go white.
“I thought so,” she whispered. “I was almost sure of that when I saw
the embossing.”
“What is it?” he asked quickly.
“There are some words here written in Braille, the language of the
blind,” she said, and again her fingers went over the surface, pausing
now and again with a puzzled frown on her face.
“Braille?” he repeated in amazement, and she nodded.
“I used to read it when I was in the Institute,” she said, “but some
of these words have been damaged, probably by the water. Some are
distinct. Will you write them down as I spell them?”
He snatched up a pen, pulled a piece of paper from the rack, and
waited. Even in that moment he thought how curiously the positions had
been reversed, and how he had become the secretary and she the
detective.
“The first word is ‘murdered,’” she said. “And then there is a space,
and then the word ‘dear’; then there’s another gap, and the word ‘sea’
occurs, and that is all.”
With this weird message between them they stared at one another. What
blind man, amidst those blind shades which had mouthed and gibbered to
him in the fog, had sent this message?
What was there behind the ragged scroll of soaked paper? Whose link
did the dead man hold in his stiffened hand? Why was he murdered?
There had been money in his pocket, his possessions were untouched. It
was not for robbery that he had been struck down. Not for vengeance,
for he was a stranger.
One fact stood out, one tangible point from whence Larry knew his
future movements would radiate.
“Murder!” he said softly, “and I’ll find the man who did it, if he
hides himself in hell!”