The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet | Page 7

down in no spirit of criticism. I had
known Godfrey 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 assistance,
while his former connection with the force and his careful maintenance
of the friendships formed at that time gave him an entrée 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?" Godfrey demanded.
"Poison--and it's in his stomach. We'll find it there."
"How about the odour?" Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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," Godfrey 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 documents 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 assist in
establishing his identity.
"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 Godfrey.
"His best girl?"
For answer, Godfrey 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 Godfrey, 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