THE CAUSE OF DEATH
I waited with sickening apprehension for a few instants.
“And the others?--the Zenobia costume, has that been traced?” I was
driven to ask.
“Not yet. There are several more places to be visited.”
The respite gave me time to breathe. As I slowly descended the stairs,
my mind became absorbed in pondering the news I had just received, and
the use to which it might be put.
The figure of Salome came before me as I had seen her the night before,
pursuing the hooded Inquisitor, luring him to dance with her, and
keeping a jealous eye on his movements when he was engaged with other
partners. Astounded as I was to learn that the mysterious dancer was
no other than the dead man’s step-daughter, it did not take me long to
reconcile the intelligence with her remarkable character, as revealed
in the course of the morning’s investigations.
I began to see depths in the strange girl’s nature of which she herself
had hardly been aware. It was not only indignation on her mother’s
behalf that had prompted her to trace her step-father’s doings. It was
not merely curiosity that had brought her to the Domino Club to watch
his movements. Her fierce denunciation of the women patients whom she
had accused of depraving him had been inspired by a secret feeling of
which she was herself unconscious. The man had fascinated her unawares.
Without knowing it she had been jealous on her own account as well as
her mother’s. In a strange ignorance of her own feelings which was yet
a natural result of the relationship in which she had been brought up,
she had continued to believe herself his enemy. She had imagined that
hatred was the passion that inspired her to disguise herself and come
to watch him, to dance with him time after time, and to pursue him with
restless vigilance when he transferred his attentions to anyone else.
Meanwhile it seemed to me that this discovery offered me a chance of
diverting inquiry from myself and from one in whom I was far more
deeply interested than in Sarah Neobard. I must try to concentrate Sir
Frank Tarleton’s suspicions on Salome, and induce him to pass over the
other characters to whom his attention had been drawn by the evidence
of the waiter Gerard and the entries in the books.
I entered his study again to find him engaged in drawing up a list of
names. I let my eye steal towards the paper as I approached and my
heart sank as I read the one just written--“_Lady Violet Bredwardine_.”
“The mystery is solved, apparently,” I announced in a tone of
confidence. “The Salome costume has been traced to Miss Neobard.”
To my discomfiture the consultant merely gave the nod of one who hears
what he expected.
“Poor girl; I was afraid of it.”
He went on writing without further remark, while I dropped into a chair
and looked on with sickly apprehension. At last he looked up.
“Listen, Cassilis. I have made a complete list of the names which
appear in the members’ roll and also in the appointment-book with
numbers attached to them. We have still to find out what the numbers
mean, of course. Have you formed any theory on that point?”
I shook my head. I was honestly ignorant, and if I had been able to
make any guess I should have refrained, for fear of leading Tarleton in
the very direction I was anxious to turn him away from.
“All I can conjecture at this stage is that the numbers refer to pages
in the book that has been abstracted from the safe,” the physician said
thoughtfully. “But I confess that that explanation doesn’t satisfy
myself. My instinct tells me that these names are the names of persons
with whom Weathered had some peculiar relation, perhaps financial,
perhaps....” He paused and shook his head. “At all events, if Madame
Bonnell told us the truth in saying that he went in mortal fear of some
of his fellow-members, I am convinced that the names of those whom he
feared are in this list.”
He passed it over to me. Of the dozen names it contained more than half
were those of women. But I had no eyes for more names than one. I was
racking my brain for some convincing argument against the course which
my chief was evidently bent on following.
“Miss Neobard’s name is not in this list,” I objected. “And yet we
know now that she was present last night, and passed more time in
Weathered’s company than anyone else. And she had very strong motives
for regarding him with hatred.”
Again Tarleton exhibited signs of surprise, almost of impatience.
“It seems to me, Cassilis, that you have a good deal to learn in the
analysis of human nature, or at all events of feminine nature, if you
consider that hatred was the motive that inspired that young woman to
follow her step-father to the Domino Club last night. Hatred of the
other women who were there, if you like, but certainly not hatred of
him.”
It was difficult for me to keep up the pretence of believing in a
theory which my own judgment had already discarded. I fell back on
another point.
“What strikes me, sir, that all the persons whose names appear in your
list were old frequenters of the club. They had had many previous
opportunities of drugging Weathered. Last night was the first occasion
on which his step-daughter was present, and last night was the first
time he was attacked.”
Tarleton accepted this argument more amicably.
“Now you have made a real point. It might be a good point if there
were no other suspicious features in the case. But it is open to this
objection that your argument cuts both ways. Sarah Neobard lived in
her step-father’s house, and had every opportunity of administering
drugs to him there. Why should she have chosen the Domino Club for
such a purpose? And if her object was to obtain his keys, she might
have managed that when he was asleep at home far more easily than
anywhere else. That’s the one point we mustn’t lose sight of in this
affair--that the motive was to gain access to Weathered’s safe. Revenge
was a secondary consideration.”
I felt myself fairly cornered. Prudence compelled me to assent to my
chief’s reasoning.
“I will ask you to make a copy of this final list and send it round to
Captain Charles,” he went on to say. “The police may be able to find
out something about these twelve persons which will narrow the inquiry
down to one or two.”
I held out a hand that almost trembled for the paper, and hastened
to fold it up and slip it into my pocket. The thought had instantly
occurred to me that I might omit one name in the copy to be sent to the
police without much risk. If the omission were discovered it would be
put down to carelessness, and meanwhile time would have been gained.
Tarleton had risen to his feet.
“And now it is time to examine the body,” he said gravely.
I followed him out of the room and into the laboratory, where the
corpse lay stretched on a marble slab, ready for the surgical knife.
The sight distracted me for a time from my other anxiety. I was
profoundly puzzled by the symptoms I have described already. The
grayness I had remarked had grown deeper, and the whole surface of
the skin was corrugated by tiny wrinkles, so that it presented the
appearance of a mummy dried by the embalmer. It was impossible to
attribute these signs to the action of opium in any quantity of which I
had experimental knowledge. My heart sank as I remembered the ominous
pronouncement of my chief. If he were right, and another drug, more
deadly than opium, had been administered by an unknown hand to the
masked Inquisitor during last night’s revel, the situation would be
terrible indeed. The murder, the deeply-planned murder, as Sir Frank
had termed it in advance, would be attributed to the same hand that had
abstracted the keys and carried off the case-book from the safe.
The proceedings in which I had now to play the part of assistant were
of too gruesome a nature to be described in anything but a medical
report. It is enough to say that the general result was negative as far
as my medical knowledge went. There was no sign of any organic injury.
There was nothing in the condition of the heart to explain the fatal
event. The internal symptoms corresponded closely with the external
ones. Everything pointed to death having been brought about by the
action of a poison similar in some of its effects to opium, yet having
a peculiar influence on the interior membranes as well as on the outer
cuticle. But what that poison was I was at a loss to tell.
The specialist seemed to be as completely baffled as myself. He pursued
the examination almost in silence, only speaking from time to time to
ask me to hand him the different reagents used in testing for poisons.
It was quickly evident that none of the common poisons was present.
Anything like strychnine or arsenic was out of the question from the
first. The rapidity with which death had taken place eliminated the
possibility of germs. More subtle agents, such as belladonna and
aconite, were tested for in vain. In the midst of my overpowering
anxiety I was moved to admiration by the expert’s extraordinary skill.
All kinds of tests of which I had never heard were brought to bear;
drugs unknown to me even by name were called into requisition; minute
discolorations were examined by a powerful microscope; a galvanic
battery was applied to one organ, and the X-ray to another. And still
there was no positive result.
Hours passed away unnoticed in the laborious search. It was nearly
dinner-time when Tarleton at length straightened himself up with a look
of finality, walked across the room, and began washing his hands.
“I have now tried for every agent known to the British Pharmacopœia
that might possibly have produced death with such symptoms as those,
and not one is present,” he said with extreme gravity.
I felt myself shivering. If anyone else had been speaking I should have
thought he was attributing the death to a supernatural cause.
“There are only two possibilities left, so far as I can see,” he
continued. “One is that I am dealing with a murderer whose knowledge of
poisons is more extensive than my own.”
I shook my head in protest.
“In that case,” Tarleton went on deliberately, “he must be a foreigner.
And we must be prepared to find that the life of the Crown Prince was
aimed at, after all. The Bolsheviks are in close relation with a party
among the Chinese. It may well be that the Chinese possess the secret
of treating opium in such a way as to make it produce effects unknown
to Western science. I shall have to ask Charles to find out what
costume the Prince wore last night, and to learn a little more about
the Chancellor of the Slavonian Legation.”
He broke off for a few moments, and I breathed more freely than I had
done for many hours. He finished drying his hands before he spoke again.
“There is a second possibility. There is one drug known to me which
does in fact produce appearances exactly like those we have seen.
But it is a drug not mentioned in the Pharmacopœia, and I had every
reason to believe that I was the only person in this part of the world
who had any of it in his possession. I keep it in a sealed bottle in
my private safe, and I am now going to see if that bottle has been
tampered with, and any of the poison is missing.”
The consultant was facing me as he spoke, and his keen gray eyes were
fixed on me with an expression which might have been merely meant to
impress me with the gravity of the situation. But my conscience took
the alarm. For the first time a sickening conviction seized me that
I was being watched. I told myself that my chief had noticed signs
of confusion and dread in my behaviour, and had begun to entertain
a suspicion that I knew more about the tragedy than I had chosen to
reveal.
Now it seemed his suspicion had gone deeper. He was actually asking
himself if I had taken advantage of my opportunities as an inmate
of his house to search for a more subtle drug than morphia, and had
stooped to rob him. And although I knew myself to be innocent of any
such action, I trembled at the idea. If the bottle or any of its
contents should be missing, how could I possibly hope to exculpate
myself?
I dared not to open my lips. Tarleton, with something like a sigh,
went towards the cabinet in which his drugs were stored, took out his
bunch of keys and applied one of them to a small steel safe on an
inner shelf. I held my breath as the door swung open. He put in his
hand, took out a square glass bottle of the size known to chemists as
four-ounce, and held it up to the light.
The bottle appeared to be full of a gray powder. The glass stopper was
covered with black sealing-wax, and he bent his head over it, minutely
scrutinizing the edges of the wax, and the impression of a seal on the
flat top.
“Thank Heaven!”
I echoed the ejaculation in my thoughts as he raised his head and
looked round at me with a smile of unmistakable relief.
“It is exactly as I left it I sealed it with my own signet ring.” He
extended his little finger for me to see. “The seal is intact. If this
was the poison used, it wasn’t obtained here.”
I had reason to feel satisfied. I knew my chief’s generous nature
well enough to feel sure that he would feel remorse for his momentary
suspicion of me, and would be disposed to atone for it by shutting his
eyes to whatever else might point to my being concerned in the case. In
fact he now proceeded to give me a short holiday.
“I shan’t want you for the rest of the day, Cassilis, if you want to
go out. I think we have done all we can till we hear further from the
police. I am now going to think quietly over the problem as it stands.”
I was thankful to be released. I had certain pressing business to
attend to. But first of all I went to my own room and made a copy of
the list of names I had been charged to send to Inspector Charles. And
although the paper entrusted to me contained twelve names, the one
which I posted to Scotland Yard only contained eleven.
My own business took me to a little street within a stone’s throw of
Piccadilly Circus in which I had rented a room ever since I had taken
up my abode with Sir Frank Tarleton. It was my private retreat in which
I kept up a few friendships that I did not want my chief to know of; an
asylum in which I could resume my independence for a few hours when I
was tired of the regular life I was compelled to lead under my senior’s
eye. I had taken the room under my Christian name of Bertrand for
greater security. It was from this room that I had gone in disguise to
the Domino Club, and it was here that I had dropped my disguise again,
little dreaming that before twelve hours had passed it would have
become a precious possession.
Luckily I had taken the precaution to leave it under lock and key in an
old suit-case that I kept under the bed. As soon as I had let myself
into the room and fastened the door securely, I dragged out the case
and opened it with feverish haste. So far all was well. The costume lay
exactly as I had left it. And now what was to be done with it?
I thought out the problem carefully. I followed out in imagination the
search of the police among the theatrical costumiers. At any moment
they might come to a certain little Jew in Wardour Street, and force
him to disclose the name and address to which this very costume had
been sent more than a year ago. And the next step would surely be for
them to inquire what had become of it.
I thought then, and I think now, that I took the most prudent course in
the circumstances. I first wrote a letter. Then I locked up the case
again, labelled it, and carried it up Shaftesbury Avenue to the post
office.