Part 4 (2/2)
he half apologized.
”Oh, sure,” a.s.sented the jewelry worker.
”Doc Warren, eh,” mused Thong to his partner, as Darcy preceded them downstairs. ”Now we'll know what killed her, and we'll have something to start on--maybe.”
”I think we've got something already,” observed Carroll.
”Oh, yes--maybe--and then--again--maybe _not_. Come on!”
”Morning boys! Nice crisp day--if you say it quick!” cried the county physician, as he shook the rain from his coat and tossed his auto gloves on a s.h.i.+ny gla.s.s showcase. ”Second time this week you've got me out of bed before my time. What's the matter, if they've got to have a murder, with doing it in the afternoon? I like my sleep!”
He was smiling and cheerful, was Dr. Warren. Murders and autopsies were all in the day's work with him. He had been county physician for a number of years.
”Hum, yes! quite an old lady,” he mused as he took off his coat, which Carroll held for him. The doctor rolled up his s.h.i.+rt sleeves and stooped down. ”Head's badly cut--let's see what we have here. Let's have a light, it's too dark to see.”
One of the clerks switched on more electric lights, and they glinted and sparkled on the silver and cut gla.s.s. They flashed on the white, still face, and the gleams seemed to be swallowed up in that red blotch in the snowy hair.
”Um, yes! Depressed fracture. Bad place, too. Shouldn't wonder but what it had done the trick. Might have been from a black-jack?” and he glanced questioningly at the detectives.
Carroll shook his head in negation.
”That'll crack a skull, but it won't draw blood--not if it's used right,” and he brought from his hip pocket one of the weapons in question--a short, stout flexible reed, covered with leather, the end forming a pocket in which was a chunk of lead.
”I'll gamble it wasn't one of _them_,” said Carroll.
”Maybe not,” a.s.sented the doctor. ”Let's look a bit further.”
He glanced at the floor about the body, peered around the edge of a showcase, underneath which there was a s.p.a.ce for refuse--odds and ends, discarded wrapping paper and the like--a place into which neither of the detectives had, as yet, glanced. Dr. Warren uttered an exclamation, and drew out a metal statue, about two feet high.
It was that of a hunter, standing as though he had just delivered a shot, and was peering to see the effect. The b.u.t.t of his gun projected behind him, and as Dr. Warren moved the statue into the light of the jewelry store chandeliers, they all saw, clinging to the stock of the gun, some straggling, white hairs.
”That's what did it!” exclaimed the county physician. ”I'll wager, when I try, I can fit that gun b.u.t.t into the depression of the fracture. The burglar--or whoever it was--swung this statue as a club.
It would make a deadly one, using the foot end for a handle,” and Dr.
Warren waved the ornament in the air over the dead woman's head to ill.u.s.trate what he meant.
”Don't!” muttered Darcy in a strained voice.
”Don't what?” asked the physician sharply.
”Use the statue that way.”
”Why not?”
”Well--er--I--we were going to buy it for our new home. But now-- Oh, I never want to see it in the house! I couldn't bear to look at it--nor could she!”
”She? We? What do you mean?” asked Carroll quickly. ”Say, do you know something about this killing that you're keeping back from us?”
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