For the moment we were both too aghast to speak.
The clump of rank high grass in the hollow had been beaten down, and in
the centre, revealed by the uncertain light of our lanterns, lay a young
man, whose white face and wide-open, sightless eyes told us both the
terrible truth.
He had been murdered!
As I bent to examine him as he lay slightly on his side, I saw that from
an ugly knife-wound in his back blood was still oozing, and had soaked
into the ground around him. Both hands were tightly clenched, as though
the unfortunate fellow had died in a spasm of agony, while upon one
finger something shone, which I discovered to be a gold ring of curious,
foreign workmanship, shaped like a large scarab, or sacred beetle, about
half an inch long, and nearly as broad--an unusual ring which attracted
my curiosity.
The grass around bore distinct marks of a desperate struggle, and from
the position in which the young man was lying, it seemed as though,
being struck suddenly, he had stumbled, fallen forward, and expired.
"He's been murdered, sir, without a doubt," exclaimed Warr, at last
breaking the silence. "I thought you said you heard a woman's voice?"
"So I did," I replied, much puzzled at the discovery, for, to tell the
truth, I had half-expected to find Lolita herself. Even at that moment
I could have sworn that the cry was hers. "It seems, however, that I
must have been mistaken."
"But who can he be?" exclaimed the innkeeper. "He's an utter stranger
to me. I've certainly never seen him in Sibberton."
"Neither have I," was my response. "There's some deep mystery here,
depend upon it," I added, recollecting all that Lolita had so strangely
told me earlier in the evening.
"And my own opinion is that the fellow who called at my house this
evening--Mr Richard Keene, as he said his name was--has had a hand in
it," Warr declared as he looked across at me, still kneeling by the
young man's body.
"Well, it certainly seems suspiciously like it. Both men are entire
strangers, that's evident."
In order to ascertain whether there was not a spark of life still left,
I undid the poor fellow's vest and placed my hand upon his heart. There
was, however, no movement. The blow had been struck with an unerring
hand, while the weapon had been withdrawn and carried away by the
assassin.
He was well-dressed, dark-haired, with an aquiline and somewhat refined
countenance. He wore a slight, dark moustache, and I judged his age to
be about twenty-three. His blue serge suit was of fine quality, but was
evidently of foreign cut, and his boots were also of foreign shape and
make. His hands, I felt, were soft, as though unused to work, yet where
he lay, in that damp hollow, I was unable to search his clothes properly
to discover a clue to his identity.
The spot where he had been attacked had certainly been chosen by some
one well acquainted with the park. The hollow, once an old gravel-pit,
but now overgrown with grass, was screened by the trees of the avenue,
so that any one in it would be entirely hidden from view, even in broad
daylight. Therefore it struck me that the unfortunate victim had been
enticed there by the assassin, and foully done to death.
Yet after hearing those cries I had certainly detected no movement. The
murderer must have crept silently out of the grassy hollow, and struck
straight across the park to the woods half a mile away. Had any other
direction been taken, I must certainly have heard his footsteps.
But the woman who had screamed. What of her?
I had, at the moment, little time for reflection. Acting upon the
innkeeper's suggestion I went off to fetch Knight, the constable, and my
friend Pink, the doctor, while he remained with his lantern beside the
victim of the tragedy.
As soon as the doctor saw him he shook his head, declaring that the
wound had proved fatal a few minutes after he had been struck, while the
constable, alive to the importance of the occasion, commenced suggesting
all sorts of wild theories regarding the dead stranger. Disregarding
them all, however, we obtained a hurdle, and Warr and Knight carried the
body down the dark avenue, a strange and weird procession, our way lit
uncertainly by the swing lanterns, our voices awed and hushed in the
presence of the unknown dead.
The men deposited their inanimate burden in an outhouse at the back of
the village inn to await the inquest which Pink declared would be
necessary, and then, with a better light and the door closed against any
prying intruder, we examined the dead man's pockets to see whether they
contained anything that might throw light on the tragic affair or lead
to his identification.
The constable, with the officiousness of his class, took out a ponderous
note-book and with a stubby piece of pencil commenced to make an
inventory of what we found--a pocket-knife, about three pounds ten in
money, a gold French piece of twenty francs, a gun-metal watch and
plated chain, a few loose cigarettes a box of matches, a pawn-ticket
shewing that a lady's necklet had been pledged in the name of Bond, with
a pawnbroker in the Westminster Bridge Road, about a year ago. Beyond
that there was no clue to the dead man's name. We were all
disappointed, for the mystery surrounding him was heightened by the
absence of any letter in his pocket or name upon his underclothing. Men
who go to a pawnshop do not usually give their real names, hence we knew
that Bond was assumed. Indeed, in pawnbroking the name of the person
offering the pledge is never even asked, the assistant filling up the
voucher in any name that comes to him.
While the others were making careful examination of the maker's name and
number of the dead man's watch, I chanced to hold his waistcoat in my
hand, when between my fingers I felt something like a letter. In an
instant I was prompted to take possession of it secretly, and this I
managed to do, first crushing it into the palm of my hand, then
transferring it to my pocket.
Was it possible that the crisp paper so cunningly concealed in the
lining of the waistcoat contained a clue? My heart beat quickly, and I
longed to escape from the place and examine it in secret. If Lolita had
actually been present at the tragedy and had any connection with it, my
duty was surely to conceal the fact. She had admitted that she was in
deadly peril, and I had promised to assist her; therefore, by securing
any clue and hiding it from the police, I was assuredly acting in her
interest.
I had already managed to secure the ring surreptitiously from the dead
man's finger before the body had been removed from the spot where we had
discovered it, and as neither Warr nor the others had noticed it, I held
it as a probable clue which I intended should be my secret alone.
"He was evidently struck with a long thin knife," remarked Pink, a
muscular, clean-shaven man who was extremely popular in the district, a
keen sportsman and something of an epicure. He had probed the wound and
ascertained that its direction had been only too accurate. "Whoever did
it," he declared, "knew exactly where to strike. I daresay he fell
without a cry. The knife was very sharp, too," he went on, examining
one of the black horn buttons of the young man's jacket-cuff. "You see
it grazed this as he raised his arm to ward off the blow and shaved off
a tiny piece, just as a razor might. The coroner will want to see this.
I'll get Newman over, and we'll make a proper post-mortem in the
morning."
Pink was a clever surgeon who masked his capabilities behind an
easy-going good-humour. His poor patients were often convulsed by his
amusing remarks, while at the houses of the county people he was always
a welcome guest on account of his inexhaustible fund of droll stories,
his shrewd wit, and his outspoken appreciation of a good dinner. His
odd ways were the idiosyncrasies of genius, for without doubt he was as
expert a surgeon as there was outside Harley Street, and I myself had
heard praise of him from the mouths of certain London men with big
"names."
The manner in which he examined the unfortunate young man who had so
suddenly fallen a victim of an assassin showed that he was intensely
interested. He grunted once or twice and sniffed suspiciously, and with
some gusto took a pinch of snuff from his heavy silver box. Then,
having carefully examined the man's right hand, he turned to me again,
saying, as he pointed to it--
"That's strange, Woodhouse, isn't it?"
"What?" I inquired, detecting nothing.
"Can't you see. His hand is clenched. He grasped something just at the
moment when he was struck."
"Well?"
He held the lantern closer to the cold stiff hand, and pointing to the
thumb that was closely clenched upon the fingers, said--
"Can't you see anything there?"
I looked, and then for the first time detected that beneath the thumb
was something white--a tiny piece of white fur!
"That's out of a woman's jacket, or boa, or something," he declared,
gradually disengaging it, and placing it in the hollow of his hand for
closer inspection. "There are one or two black hairs with it, showing
it, I believe, to be ermine fur--a woman who wore some garment of
ermine."
"Are you certain?" I gasped.
"Almost--but not quite until I put it beneath the microscope. Then I'll
be able to tell for certain. But surely it couldn't have been a woman
who killed him?"
"It looks very much like it, sir," remarked Knight, who had been gazing
eagerly over the doctor's shoulder.
"Then what woman?" asked Warr, glancing across at me.
I held my breath. A silence fell between us. The mystery was of such a
character that neither of us dare advance any further theory.
For my own part, however, the discovery of this tiny piece of fur was
directly suspicious, and went much to confirm my belief that Lolita had
been at the spot where the tragedy had been enacted, for I now
recollected that sometimes when she went out after dinner she put on a
wide ermine boa with long ends to cover her shoulders, a very handsome
piece of fur that had been brought for her from Petersburg when the
young Countess of Stanchester went to visit the Grand-Duchess Paul in
the previous winter.
Was it possible that the poor young fellow had clutched at it in his
dying grasp? Or had he seized the fur garment of some other woman?
Yet, I recollected, furs are not usually worn in mid-August save just to
throw over a dinner-gown as protection from chills when the damp is
rising after the heat of the day.
On the other hand, I tried to convince myself that the cry was not that
of the sweet-eyed woman I loved; nevertheless, such thought was in vain.
I knew that voice far too well to have been mistaken.
For quite an hour Pink continued his investigations as keenly and
methodically as any practised detective, for he rather prided himself
upon the manner in which he made discoveries about persons, and
frequently astounded his patients by his knowledge of their actions and
movements, which they believed only known to themselves. At last,
however, he exhausted all the points possible to investigate without a
post-mortem, and just as the church clock struck three we came forth,
Warr locking the door of the outhouse, while Knight left us to ride on
his bicycle into Northampton to report to the headquarters of the
constabulary.
Pink's way lay past my house, for he lived in a big, square, comfortable
house about a quarter of a mile out of the village, on the London road,
and as we walked together up the silent street, he suddenly said--
"Do you know, Woodhouse, I have a firm belief that the young fellow has
been murdered by some woman! We must search the spot early in the
morning and see if we can't find some footprints, or other traces.
Fortunately, it's damp in that hollow, and a woman's heel would leave a
well-defined mark. Will you be ready at seven to go back there with
me?"
The suggestion had never occurred to me, and my heart stood still when I
reflected what tell-tale traces might there be left. But I strove to
show no dismay, merely answering--
"Certainly. I'll be ready. We may discover something to give the
police a clue."
"Police!" he cried. "They're useless. We shall have a swarm of
thick-headed bunglers over here to-morrow. If they sent one smart man
down from Scotland Yard they might do some good. But the plain-clothes
men of the local constabulary haven't sufficient practice in serious
crime to pursue any clever methods of investigation."
"Well, then, at seven," I exclaimed, for we had just reached my gate,
and I was anxious to get to my own room and ascertain the nature of the
paper I had managed to secure from the lining of the dead man's
waistcoat.
"That's an appointment," he said, and as I turned and entered my
old-fashioned, ivy-covered house with my latch-key, he pursued his way
up the short steep hill towards his home.
Within my own cosy sitting-room the green-shaded reading-lamp was still
burning, and Mrs Dawson, my attentive housekeeper, had placed my
slippers ready in their accustomed corner. But throwing off my light
overcoat I cast myself instantly into my favourite grandfather chair,
and drew from my pocket the clue I had surreptitiously stolen.
The piece of paper was pale blue, and as I opened it a cry of dismay
involuntarily escaped me.
What was inscribed upon it was so strange!