"It might, of course, have been self-inflicted," G.o.dfrey added, quite to himself.

Goldberger sneered a little. No doubt he found the incomprehensibility of the problem rather trying to his temper.

"A man doesn't usually commit suicide by sticking himself in the hand with a fork," he said.

"No," agreed G.o.dfrey, blandly; "but I would point out that we don't know as yet that it _is_ a case of suicide; and I'm quite sure that, whatever it may be, it isn't usual."

Goldberger's sneer deepened.

"Did any reporter for the _Record_ ever find a case that _was_ usual?" he queried.

It was a shrewd thrust, and one that G.o.dfrey might well have winced under. For the _Record_ theory was that nothing was news unless it was strange and startling, and the inevitable result was that the _Record_ reporters endeavoured to make everything strange and startling, to play up the outre details at the expense of the rest of the story, and even, I fear, to invent such details when none existed.

G.o.dfrey himself had been accused more than once of a too-luxuriant imagination. It was, perhaps, a realisation of this which had persuaded him, years before, to quit the detective force and take service with the _Record_. What might have been a weakness in the first position, was a mighty a.s.set in the latter one, and he had won an immense success.

Please understand that I set this down in no spirit of criticism. I had known G.o.dfrey rather intimately ever since the days when we were thrown together in solving the Holladay case, and I admired sincerely his ready wit, his quick insight, and his unshakable aplomb. He used his imagination in a way which often caused me to reflect that the police would be far more efficient if they possessed a dash of the same quality; and I had noticed that they were usually glad of his a.s.sistance, while his former connection with the force and his careful maintenance of the friendships formed at that time gave him an entree to places denied to less-fortunate reporters. I had never known him to do a dishonourable thing--to fight for a cause he thought unjust, to print a fact given to him in confidence, or to make a statement which he knew to be untrue. Moreover, a lively sense of humour made him an admirable companion, and it was this quality, perhaps, which enabled him to receive Goldberger's thrust with a good-natured smile.

"We've got our living to make, you know," he said. "We make it as honestly as we can. What do _you_ think, Simmonds?"

"I think," said Simmonds, who, if he possessed an imagination, never permitted it to be suspected, "that those little cuts on the hand are merely an accident. They might have been caused in half a dozen ways.

Maybe he hit his hand on something when he fell; maybe he jabbed it on a buckle; maybe he had a boil on his hand and lanced it with his knife."

"What killed him, then?" G.o.dfrey demanded.

"Poison--and it's in his stomach. We'll find it there."

"How about the odour?" G.o.dfrey persisted.

"He spilled some of the poison on his hand as he lifted it to his mouth. Maybe he had those cuts on his hand and the poison inflamed them. Or maybe he's got some kind of blood disease."

Goldberger nodded his approval, and G.o.dfrey smiled as he looked at him.

"It's easy to find explanations, isn't it?" he queried.

"It's a blamed sight easier to find a natural and simple explanation," retorted Goldberger hotly, "than it is to find an unnatural and far-fetched one--such as how one man could kill another by scratching him on the hand. I suppose you think this fellow was murdered? That's what you said a minute ago."

"Perhaps I was a little hasty," G.o.dfrey admitted, and I suspected that, whatever his thoughts, he had made up his mind to keep them to himself. "I'm not going to theorise until I've got something to start with. The facts seem to point to suicide; but if he swallowed prussic acid, where's the bottle? He didn't swallow that too, did he?"

"Maybe we'll find it in his clothes," suggested Simmonds.

Thus reminded, Goldberger fell to work looking through the dead man's pockets. The clothes were of a cheap material and not very new, so that, in life, he must have presented an appearance somewhat shabby.

There was a purse in the inside coat pocket containing two bills, one for ten dollars and one for five, and there were two or three dollars in silver and four five-centime pieces in a small coin purse which he carried in his trousers' pocket. The larger purse had four or five calling cards in one of its compartments, each bearing a different name, none of them his. On the back of one of them, Vantine's address was written in pencil.

There were no letters, no papers, no written doc.u.ments of any kind in the pockets, the remainder of whose contents consisted of such odds and ends as any man might carry about with him--a cheap watch, a pen-knife, a half-empty packet of French tobacco, a sheaf of cigarette paper, four or five keys on a ring, a silk handkerchief, and perhaps some other articles which I have forgotten--but not a thing to a.s.sist in establishing his ident.i.ty.

"We'll have to cable over to Paris," remarked Simmonds. "He's French, all right--that silk handkerchief proves it."

"Yes--and his best girl proves it, too," put in G.o.dfrey.

"His best girl?"

For answer, G.o.dfrey held up the watch, which he had been examining.

He had opened the case, and inside it was a photograph--the photograph of a woman with bold, dark eyes and full lips and oval face--a face so typically French that it was not to be mistaken.

"A lady's-maid, I should say," added G.o.dfrey, looking at it again.

"Rather good-looking at one time, but past her first youth, and so compelled perhaps to bestow her affections on a man a little beneath her--no doubt compelled also to contribute to his support in order to retain him. A woman with many pasts and no future--"

"Oh, come," broke in Goldberger impatiently, "keep your second-hand epigrams for the _Record_. What we want are facts."

G.o.dfrey flushed a little at the words and laid down the watch.

"There is one fact which you have apparently overlooked," he said quietly, "but it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that this fellow didn't drift in here by accident. He came here of intention, and the intention wasn't to kill himself, either."

"How do you know that?" demanded Goldberger, incredulously.

G.o.dfrey picked up the purse, opened it, and took out one of the cards.

"By this," he said, and held it up. "You have already seen what is written on the back of it--Mr. Vantine's name and the number of this house. That proves, doesn't it, that this fellow came to New York expressly to see Mr. Vantine?"

"Perhaps you think Mr. Vantine killed him," suggested Goldberger, sarcastically.

"No," said G.o.dfrey; "he didn't have time. You understand, Mr.

Vantine," he added, smiling at that gentleman, who was listening to all this with perplexed countenance, "we are simply talking now about possibilities. You couldn't possibly have killed this fellow because Lester has testified that he was with you constantly from the moment this man entered the house until his body was found, with the exception of the few seconds which elapsed between the time you entered this room and the time he joined you here, summoned by your cry. So you are out of the running."

"Thanks," said Vantine, drily.

"I suppose, then, you think it was Parks," said Goldberger.

"It may quite possibly have been Parks," agreed G.o.dfrey, gravely.

"Nonsense!" broke in Vantine, impatiently. "Parks is as straight as a string--he's been with me for eight years."

"Of course it's nonsense," a.s.sented Goldberger. "It's nonsense to say that he was killed by anybody. He killed himself. We'll learn the cause when we identify him--jealousy maybe, or maybe just hard luck --he doesn't look affluent."

"I'll cable to Paris," said Simmonds. "If he belongs there, we'll soon find out who he is."

"You'd better call an ambulance and have him taken to the morgue,"

went on Goldberger. "Somebody may identify him there. There'll be a crowd to-morrow, for, of course, the papers will be full of this affair--"

"The _Record_, at least, will have a very full account," G.o.dfrey a.s.sured him.

"And I'll call the inquest for the day after," Goldberger continued.

"I'll send my physician down to make a post-mortem right away. If there's any poison in this fellow's stomach, we'll find it."

G.o.dfrey did not speak; but I knew what was in his mind. He was thinking that, if such poison existed, the vessel which had contained it had not yet been found. The same thought, no doubt, occurred to Simmonds, for, after ordering the policeman in the hall to call the ambulance, he returned and began a careful search of the room, using his electric torch to illumine every shadowed corner. G.o.dfrey devoted himself to a similar search; but both were without result. Then G.o.dfrey made a minute inspection of the injured hand, while Goldberger looked on with ill-concealed impatience; and finally he moved toward the door.

"I think I'll be going," he said. "But I'm interested in what your physician will find, Mr. Coroner."

"He'll find poison, all right," a.s.serted Goldberger, with decision.