Violent death means nothing to the average police official; he comes in
almost daily contact with the most brutal and horrible form of it.
Therefore, while the utter unexpectedness of the corpse’s arrival in
their midst had a very noticeable effect on the excitable French sleuth,
and more especially on Deweese, with his wracked nerves, the others,
though momentarily startled, seemed to consider it all in the day’s work.
Strange flashed a brief glance at Peret, and then finding him glaring
blankly at the cadaver, shifted his gaze to encompass the gruesome
object of the Frenchman’s regard.
The dead man, like Peret, it was easy to see, was—or, rather had been—a
native of France. The cast of his features was unmistakable. He was of
medium height and build, was slightly bald, and his upper lip was adorned
with a small, black, tightly-waxed mustache. The dagger that was buried
to the hilt in his breast gave silent though ample testimony to the
manner in which he had met his death.
His clothing was badly torn, and there was other evidence to show that he
had put up a desperate fight with his murderer before the fatal blow was
struck. In his present state he made a ghastly spectacle, for his face
was badly discolored and smeared over with dried blood, and his eyes, one
of which was nearly torn from its socket, were wide open and fixed on the
ceiling in a glassy stare.
“Who is he?” asked O’Shane, after a brief silence.
“Adolphe,” replied Peret, bending over the body. “Berjet’s valet.”
“You knew him,” Strange stated rather than questioned.
“Yes, yes,” said Peret. “I have seen him. He was _le bon valet_. See,
sergeant, his limbs are cold and stiff. He was assassinated at least two
hours before his master was. _Mon dieu!_ What does it all mean?”
He rose to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair in a distracted
manner and stared at the corpse as if he hoped to find an answer to the
baffling mystery in the glassy eyes.
“Well, for one thing, it means that we got to get busy,” was Strange’s
energetic response.
Whereupon O’Shane began to explore the closet. Strange, however, seemed
to be in no hurry to follow the example set by his subordinate. He made
several entries in his notebook, leisurely scratched his ear and looked
at Peret from the corner of his eye. Though he would have died rather
than admit it, the detective sergeant was one of the little Frenchman’s
staunchest admirers.
He had been associated with Peret almost daily for several years, and
had given up a good many hours to the study of the other’s methods in
the hope that some day he would be able to emulate his friend’s success.
He knew that, mentally at least, Peret was his superior, and he was ever
ready to place himself under the other’s guidance when he could veil his
real intentions sufficiently to make it appear that he himself was the
leader.
“This case, at first glance, is the cat’s meow,” he said, tentatively.
“It’s the most complicated murder mystery I ever had anything to do with.
What do you make of it, Peret?”
As Peret was about to reply, the door opened and three men entered
the room. The first of these, a tall, middle-aged man, with a gray
mustache and a fine, upright carriage, was Major and Superintendent of
Police Dobson. Immediately behind him came Coroner Rane, an elderly
man with penetrating gray eyes, and Police Sergeant Alington, small,
stoop-shouldered and addicted to big-rimmed spectacles.
“What’s all the trouble about, sergeant?” was Dobson’s greeting. He
nodded to Peret, and continued: “I happened to be in my office when your
call came, so I hurried over.”
“I’m mighty glad you came,” said Strange. “I’m afraid this case is going
to prove troublesome. Did you view the bodies on the pavement.”
“Yes,” said the major. “I helped Rane examine them.”
“Well, here’s another one for you to examine,” said the detective grimly,
and, stepping aside, he exposed to the view of the newcomers the body of
the dead valet.
“This is not murder, it’s a massacre!” exclaimed the coroner.
He knelt beside the body, and scrutinized the valet’s face.
“This man has been dead for several hours, major,” he continued. “Death
was probably instantaneous, as this dagger is buried to the hilt in his
heart.” He tapped the hilt of the weapon with one of his fingers, and
looked up at Strange. “Is this man supposed to have been murdered by the
‘invisible monster’ also?” he asked sarcastically.
“So you’ve heard about the ‘invisible monster’,” returned Strange,
non-committally.
“Detective Frank, who was guarding the bodies on the pavement, told us
some wild tale about an invisible murderer,” remarked Dobson, with a
quizzical uplift of his brows. Then, failing to draw an explanation from
the sergeant, he asked: “Have you made any arrests?”
“I have not,” replied Strange, then gave a rapid account of the measures
he had taken to prevent the murderer’s escape.
Dobson nodded his approval.
“Now, tell me all you know about these mysterious deaths,” he suggested,
and Strange, nothing loath, gave a brief though vivid recital of all the
known facts in the case.
“This third murder,” he said in conclusion, “instead of complicating
matters, seems to make the going a little easier. In the dagger, with
which this man was killed, we have something tangible, anyway. But as for
Max Berjet and Dr. Sprague—.”
“Dr. Rane,” interrupted Peret from the depths of a morris chair into
which he had dropped, “will you venture an opinion as to how Berjet and
Sprague met their deaths?”
“It is impossible to reply with any degree of certainty until after the
autopsy,” answered the coroner: “but offhand I should say that they were
either asphyxiated or poisoned.”
Peret scowled at the coroner and relapsed into silence.
Strange, however, seemed to find comfort in the coroner’s words. With a
determined look on his hard-bitten face, he wheeled.
“Deweese,” he rasped, in a tone calculated to impress on the hearer the
absolute certainty of his words, “the coroner declares that you were
poisoned.” He shook a finger at the artist, as if daring him to deny it.
“The poison was probably administered several hours before you felt the
effects of it. Now think! Who gave it to you? Who had the opportunity to
give it to you? Who had a motive?”
“I was _not_ poisoned,” rejoined Deweese, quietly but emphatically. “I
was choked—choked by an unseen thing that whispered in my ear. Not only
did I hear it whisper, but I felt it breathing in my face as well.”
Peret half rose to his feet, opened his lips as if to speak, then grunted
and sat down in his chair again. Nevertheless, this new bit of evidence,
if such it might be called, seemed to impress him, and he continued to
eye the artist eagerly.
“Who is this man,” asked Dobson.
Strange, with a gesture of helplessness, explained.
“You see what we are up against, Chief,” he said. “I know how to trace a
flesh and blood murderer, but, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, I’ll be
damned if I know how to run down a spook, with no more substantial clues
than a breath and a whisper.”
“Mr. Deweese, you are positive, are you, that you were not attacked by a
human being?” questioned the major.
“I am as certain of it as I am that I am alive,” answered the artist.
“Nor an animal?”
“Yes.”
“Nor something _inside of you_?”
“If you mean poison, or something like that, yes.”
“Do you not think you might have been overcome by poisonous fumes of some
sort?”
“Absolutely not. It was not that sort of sensation that I experienced at
all.”
“Have you any idea what it was that attacked you?”
“Not the remotest idea.”
“You did not see it?”
“I did not.”
“Could you have seen it if it had had substantial form?”
“Yes, because it was between me and the street lamp.”
“Have you ever had any similar experience in the past—any experience that
resembles it in the slightest way?”
“Never!”
Dobson threw a puzzled look at the coroner.
“Well,” he began, and was interrupted by a blinding flash of light that
suddenly illuminated the room.
With a cry of terror, Deweese whirled and, darting across the room, was
about to hurl himself through the window, when Strange caught him by the
arm and dragged him back.
“S’nothing but a flash-light,” he said reassuringly. “Sergeant Alington
is photographing the finger-prints on the dagger. S’no wonder it scared
you. Made me jump myself.”
Deweese shook off the sergeant’s hand and glared at the little
finger-print expert.
“For God’s sake, let me know before you set that thing off again,” he
cried in a shaking voice. “I’ve come through an experience that has shot
my nerves to pieces and I can’t stand any more shocks tonight.”
“Sorry,” apologized Alington, and then, like the little human bloodhound
he was, turned once more to the business of nosing out and developing the
finger-prints on the dagger.
“Now,” resumed the major, after ordering O’Shane to have the house and
vicinity toothcombed, “let us take up these murders and this assault in
logical order and see if we cannot get to the bottom of this mystery.
Granted that the evidence may at first appear to point that way, to
contend that they were committed by a supernatural agency is absurd. Even
if the murderers had some way of making it impossible for their victims
to see them, we know that they were either human or animal, or, at least,
directed or controlled by human intelligence.
“First of all, we have the death of Max Berjet. This man, it appears,
died in the presence of our friend Peret. He hurled himself through that
window, had a convulsion, and died. Before he died, however, he told
Peret that he had been attacked by ten men. By the way, Peret, what were
Berjet’s last words?”
Peret sat hunched in his chair in an abstracted manner, staring
into vacancy with knitted brow. He was evidently not pleased by the
interruption, and showed his displeasure by scowling at the major.
“Just before Berjet hurled himself through the window,” he explained,
ungraciously, “I heard him cry, ‘Help! help! I’m dying!’ As he lay dying
on the pavement he gasped, ‘_Assassins ... dix!_’ just like that. _Dix_,
in the French language, means ‘ten,’ and Berjet was a Frenchman. Figure
it out for yourself.”
The major nodded, thoughtfully.
“The words scarcely need any figuring out,” he observed drily. “They seem
to figure themselves out. However, in view of the fact that all of the
exits were fastened on the inside, and also because there is no evidence
to show that any considerable number of men have recently been in this
room, I think that we may leave the number of the scientist’s murderers
open to question.
“Turning now to the second death, Dr. Sprague appears to have been
attacked in the sight of at least two men, our amiable friend Peret and
the druggist. Mr. Deweese was attacked at or about the same time that
Sprague was, and the attack was also witnessed by the two persons named.
Sprague and Deweese struggled with their antagonists, who, from all
testimony, appear to have been of immense strength and ferocity.
“Sprague was killed almost instantly, and our friend the artist, after
a desperate struggle, was fortunate enough to overcome, or at least to
throw off the Thing that had him in its grasp. Deweese, the druggist and
Peret declare that they did not see the Thing—that, in short, it was
invisible; but both of the former gentlemen testify to the fact that
they heard it whisper, and Deweese informs us further that he felt it
breathing in his face.
“It seems safe to assume, therefore, that the Thing had substantial form,
for even if we have to admit in the face of the facts that the Thing was
invisible, we know that it could not have been a supernatural being,
since supernatural beings are not supposed to whisper and breathe.”
He paused, looked at the coroner as if inviting speech, and then, when
only silence answered, continued:
“Let us turn now to the murder of the valet. There is certainly no doubt
as to the manner in which _he_ died. He was stabbed to death, and Dr.
Rane has expressed the opinion that he has been dead for several hours.
Yet, in spite of this, and in spite of the fact that the form of his
murder is entirely different from that of Berjet and Sprague, it seems
clear that the three murders, as well as the attack on the artist, are
closely related to each other.
“Whether or not they are correlated is a matter which only the future
can determine: but that they all bear some connection with each other
and were committed by the same agency, there seems to be no doubt. The
circumstances that surround the several murders speak for themselves.
Therefore, in view of the fact that Berjet’s valet was the first of the
three men to meet his death, it is my opinion that if you find _his_
murderer you will have found the man or Thing responsible for the other
two murders, and for the attack on our friend, Deweese.”
Strange heaved a sigh of profound satisfaction. He was now on familiar
ground. Unseen and unknown forces that struck men down, forces that
were apparently of some other world, were beyond his depth; but human
knife-wielders were his meat. Given something tangible, a clue, or a
motive, or even a theory that was not beyond his comprehension, there was
no man on the force who could obtain quicker or more satisfactory results
than he.
Therefore, while in his own mind, he had already settled on the dagger as
the one key to the mystery in sight, it flattered him, in spite of the
obviousness of the clue, to have the major’s opinion coincide with his
own.
“I agree with you, major,” he cried heartily. “The man that we want most
is the man that murdered the valet; and,” he added with a tightening of
his jaws, “I’m gonna get him!”
“Wait,” said Sergeant Alington, who had been an interested listener to
the major’s summing up of the case. “I have some information to reveal
which I think will be of interest to you.”
He cleared his throat, set his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his
nose, and glanced at several slips of paper he held in his hand.
“Before the bodies of Sprague and Berjet were taken to the morgue, I
secured the finger-prints of both of them. I have since photographed
a number of prints found on various objects in this room. Among the
latter are a set of well-defined prints on the handle of the dagger that
killed the valet. The photographs of these prints will not be available
for purposes of comparison, of course, until I develop them; but the
impressions on the daggerhandle are so clean-cut that they stand out
clearly under the developing powder, when a magnifying glass is applied
to them. While I cannot speak positively, therefore, I think that I have
succeeded in identifying them.”
“Well?” growled Strange, straining forward.
“Well,” replied Alington, “instead of clearing up the mystery surrounding
the murders of Sprague and Berjet, the finger-prints on the dagger tend
to complicate it—that is, if we are to assume that the prints were made
by the valet’s murderer, and this, I am sure, all of you will agree with
me in doing.”
“Well?” repeated Strange, who saw his last glimmer of hope growing dimmer
and dimmer. “Who murdered the valet?”
“If the prints were made by the man I think they were,” said Alington
slowly, as if to prolong the taste of his words, “the valet was murdered
by Max Berjet.”
_CHAPTER IV._