CHAPTER VIITHE CAUSE OF DEATH
I waitedwith 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. Itwas 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 announcedin 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 deathhaving 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 theBritish 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 onlyperson 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 squareglass 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 Iwent 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 amongthe 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.