"The first fact to startle us as we made our way up through the crowd which blocked halls and staircases was this:-A doctor had been found and,though he had been forbidden to make more than a cursory examination of the body till the coroner came,he had not hesitated to declare after his first look,that the wound had not been made by a bullet but by some sharp and slender weapon thrust home by a powerful hand.(You mark that,Mr.Gryce.)As this seemed impossible in face of the fact that the door had been found buttoned on the inside,we did not give much credit to his opinion and began our work under the obvious theory of an accidental discharge of some gun from one of the windows across the court.
But the doctor was nearer right than we supposed.When the coroner came to look into the matter,he discovered that the wound was not only too small to have been made by the ordinary bullet,but that there was no bullet to be found in the woman's body or anywhere else.Her heart had been reached by a thrust and not by a shot from a gun.Mr.Gryce,have you not heard a startling repetition of this report in a case nearer at hand?
"But to go back.This discovery,so important if true,was as yet -that is,at the time of our entering the room,-limited to the off-hand declaration of an irresponsible physician,but the possibility it involved was of so astonishing a nature that it influenced us unconsciously in our investigation and led us almost immediately into a consideration of the difficulties attending an entrance into,as well as an escape from,a room situated as this was.
"Up three flights from the court,with no communication with the adjoining rooms save through a door guarded on both sides by heavy pieces of furniture no one person could handle,the hall door buttoned on the inside,and the fire-escape some fifteen feet to the left,this room of death appeared to be as removed from the approach of a murderous outsider as the spot in the writing-room of the Clermont where Miss Challoner fell.
"Otherwise,the place presented the greatest contrast possible to that scene of splendour and comfort.I had not entered the Clermont at that time,and no,such comparison could have struck my mind.But I have thought of it since,and you,with your experience,will not find it difficult to picture the room where this poor woman lived and worked.Bare walls,with just a newspaper illustration pinned up here and there,a bed -tragically occupied at this moment -a kitchen stove on which a boiler,half-filled with steaming clothes still bubbled and foamed,-an old bureau,-a large pine wardrobe against an inner door which we later found to have been locked for months,and the key lost,-some chairs -and most pronounced of all,because of its position directly before the window,a pine bench supporting a wash-tub of the old sort.
"As it was here the woman fell,this tub naturally received the closest examination.A board projected from its further side,whither it had evidently been pushed by the weight of her falling body;and from its top hung a wet cloth,marking with its lugubrious drip on the boards beneath the first heavy moments of silence which is the natural accompaniment of so serious a survey.On the floor to the right lay a half-used cake of soap just as it had slipped from her hand.The window was closed,for the temperature was at the freezing-point,but it had been found up,and it was put up now to show the height at which it had then stood.As we all took our look at the house wall opposite,a sound of shouting came up from below.A dozen children were sliding on barrel staves down a slope of heaped-up snow.They had been engaged in this sport all the afternoon and were our witnesses later that no one had made a hazardous escape by means of the ladder of the fire-escape,running,as I have said,at an almost unattainable distance towards the left.
"Of her own child,whose cries had roused the neighbours,nothing was to be seen.The woman in the extreme rear had carried it off to her room;but when we came to see it later,no doubt was felt by any of us that this child was too young to talk connectedly,nor did I ever hear that it ever said anything which could in any way guide investigation.
"And that is as far as we ever got.The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of death by means of a stab from some unknown weapon in the hand of a person also unknown,but no weapon was ever found,nor was it ever settled how the attack could have been made or the murderer escape under the conditions described.The woman was poor,her friends few,and the case seemingly inexplicable.So after creating some excitement by its peculiarities,it fell of its own weight.But I remembered it,and in many a spare hour have tried to see my way through the no-thoroughfare it presented.But quite in vain.To-day,the road is as blind as ever,but -"here Sweetwater's face sharpened and his eyes burned as he leaned closer and closer to the older detective -"but this second case,so unlike the first in non-essentials but so exactly like it in just those points which make the mystery,has dropped a thread from its tangled skein into my hand,which may yet lead us to the heart of both.
Can you guess -have you guessed -what this thread is?But how could you without the one clew I have not given you?Mr.Gryce,the tenement where this occurred is the same I visited the other night in search of Mr.Brotherson.And the man characterised at that time by the janitor as the best,the quietest and most respectable tenant in the whole building,and the one you remember whose window opened directly opposite the spot where this woman lay dead,was Mr.Dunn himself,or,in other words,our late redoubtable witness,Mr.Orlando Brotherson."
XII
Mr.GRYCE FINDS AN ANTIDOTE FOR OLD AGE
