The Green Eyes of Bâst | Page 7

quietly.

The constable produced a key and unlocked the door of the small stone
building. Immediately there was a forward movement of the whole
waiting group, but:
"If you please, gentlemen," said Gatton, raising his hand. "I must make
my examination first; and Mr. Addison," he added, seeing the
resentment written upon the faces of my disappointed confrères, "has
special information which I am going to ask him to place at my
disposal."
The constable stood aside and I followed Inspector Gatton into the
stone shed.
"Lock the door again, constable," he ordered; "no one is to be
admitted."
Thereupon I looked about me, and the scene which I beheld was so
strange and gruesome that its every detail remains imprinted upon my
memory.
The building then was lighted by four barred windows set so high in
the walls that no one could look in from the outside. Blazing sunlight
poured in at the two southerly windows and drew a sharp black pattern
of the bars across the paved floor. Kneeling beside a stretcher, fully in
this path of light, so that he presented a curious striped appearance, was
a man who presently proved to be the divisional surgeon, and two
paces beyond stood a police inspector who was engaged at the moment
of our entrance in making entries in his note-book.
On the stretcher, so covered up that only his face was visible, lay one
whom at first I failed to recognize, for the horribly contorted features
presented a kind of mottled green appearance utterly indescribable.
Stifling an exclamation of horror, I stared and stared at that ghastly face,
then:
"My God!" I muttered. "Yes! it is Sir Marcus!"

The surgeon stood up and the inspector advanced to meet Gatton, but
my horrified gaze had strayed from the stretcher to a badly damaged
and splintered packing-case, which was the only other object in the
otherwise empty shed. At this I stared as much aghast as I had stared at
the dead man.
The iron bands were broken and twisted and the whole of one side lay
in fragments on the floor; but upon a board which had formed part of
the top I perceived the figure of a cat roughly traced in green paint.
Beyond any shadow of doubt this crate was the same which on the
night before had lain in the garage of the Red House!
CHAPTER III
THE GREEN IMAGE
"Yes," said Gatton, "I was speaking no more than the truth when I told
them that you had special information which I hoped you would place
at my disposal. Some of the particulars were given to me over the
'phone, you see, and I was glad to find you here when I arrived. I
should have consulted you in any event, and principally about--that."
He pointed to an object which I held in my hand. It was a little green
enamel image; the crouching figure of a woman having a cat's head, a
piece of Egyptian workmanship probably of the fourth century B.C.
Considered in conjunction with the figure painted upon the crate, the
presence of this little image was so amazing a circumstance that from
the moment when it had been placed in my hand I had stood staring at
it almost dazedly.
The divisional surgeon had gone, and only the local officer remained
with Gatton and myself in the building. Sir Marcus Coverly presented
all the frightful appearance of one who has died by asphyxia, and
although of course there would be an autopsy, little doubt existed
respecting the mode of his death. The marks of violence found upon the
body could be accounted for by the fact that the crate had fallen a
distance of thirty feet into the hold, and the surgeon was convinced that

the injuries to the body had all been received after death, death having
taken place in his opinion fully twelve hours before.
"You see," said Gatton, "when the crate broke several things which
presumably were in Sir Marcus' pockets were found lying loose
amongst the wreckage. That cat-woman was one of them."
"Yet it may not have been in any of his pockets at all," said I.
"It may not," agreed Gatton. "But that it was somewhere in the crate is
beyond dispute, I think. Besides this is more than a coincidence."
And he pointed to the painted cat upon the lid of the packing-case. I
had already told him of the episode at the Red House on the previous
night, and now:
"The fates are on our side," I said, "for at least we know where the crate
was despatched from."
"Quite so," agreed Gatton. "We should have got that from the carter
later, of course, but every minute saved in an affair such as this is worth
considering.