The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet | Page 6

he's French, as Parks suggested," said Godfrey. "That's
evident, too, from the cut of his clothes."
"Yes, and from the cut of his hair," added Goldberger. "You say you
didn't know him, Mr. Vantine?"
"I never before saw him, to my knowledge," answered Vantine. "The
name is wholly unknown to me."
"Well," said Goldberger, taking possession of the card again and
slipping it into his pocket, "suppose we lift him onto that couch by the
window and take a look through his clothes."

The man was slightly built, so that Simmonds and Goldberger raised
the body between them without difficulty and placed it on the couch. I
saw Godfrey's eyes searching the carpet.
"What I should like to know," he said, after a moment, "is this: if this
fellow took poison, what did he take it out of? Where's the paper, or
bottle, or whatever it was?"
"Maybe it's in his hand," suggested Simmonds, and lifted the right hand,
which hung trailing over the side of the couch.
Then, as he raised it into the light, a sharp cry burst from him.
"Look here," he said, and held the hand so that we all could see.
It was swollen and darkly discoloured.
"See there," said Simmonds, "something bit him," and he pointed to
two deep incisions on the back of the hand, just above the knuckles,
from which a few drops of blood had oozed and dried.
With a little exclamation of surprise and excitement, Godfrey bent for
an instant above the injured hand. Then he turned and looked at us.
"This man didn't take poison," he said, in a low voice. "He was killed!"

CHAPTER III
THE WOUNDED HAND
"He was killed!" repeated Godfrey, with conviction; and, at the words,
we drew together a little, with a shiver of repulsion. Death is awesome
enough at any time; suicide adds to its horror; murder gives it the final
touch.
So we all stood silent, staring as though fascinated at the hand which
Simmonds held up to us; at those tiny wounds, encircled by discoloured

flesh and with a sinister dash of clotted blood running away from them.
Then Goldberger, taking a deep breath, voiced the thought which had
sprung into my own brain.
"Why, it looks like a snake-bite!" he said, his voice sharp with
astonishment.
And, indeed, it did. Those two tiny incisions, scarcely half an inch apart,
might well have been made by a serpent's fangs.
The quick glance which all of us cast about the room was, of course, as
involuntary as the chill which ran up our spines; yet Godfrey and I--yes,
and Simmonds--had the excuse that, once upon a time, we had had an
encounter with a deadly snake which none of us was likely ever to
forget. We all smiled a little sheepishly as we caught each other's eyes.
"No, I don't think it was a snake," said Godfrey, and again bent close
above the hand. "Smell it, Mr. Goldberger," he added.
The coroner put his nose close to the hand and sniffed.
"Bitter almonds!" he said.
"Which means prussic acid," said Godfrey, "and not snake poison." He
fell silent a moment, his eyes on the swollen hand. The rest of us stared
at it too; and I suppose all the others were labouring as I was with the
effort to find some thread of theory amid this chaos. "It might, of
course, have been self-inflicted," Godfrey 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 Godfrey, 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 Godfrey 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 outré details at the expense of the rest of the story, and even, I
fear, to invent such details when none existed.
Godfrey 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 asset in the latter one, and he had won an immense success.
Please understand that I set this