The spell of horror cast over us by the sight of the tortured body was broken by the matter-of-fact tones of Heath.
“You see, Mr. Markham, she was evidently sitting in the corner of this settee when she was grabbed suddenly from behind.”
Markham nodded. “It must have taken a pretty strong man to strangle her so easily.”
“I’ll say!” agreed Heath. He bent over and pointed to the girl’s fingers, on which showed several abrasions. “They stripped her rings off, too; and they didn’t go about it gentle, either.” Then he indicated a segment of fine platinum chain, set with tiny pearls, which hung over one of her shoulders. “And they grabbed whatever it was hanging round her neck, and broke the chain doing it. They weren’t overlooking anything, or losing any time. … A swell, gentlemanly job. Nice and refined.”
“Where’s the Medical Examiner?” asked Markham.
“He’s coming,” Heath told him. “You can’t get Doc Doremus to go anywheres without his breakfast.”
“He may find something else—something that doesn’t show.”
“There’s plenty showing for me,” declared Heath. “Look at this apartment. It wouldn’t be much worse if a Kansas cyclone had struck it.”
We turned from the depressing spectacle of the dead girl and moved toward the centre of the room.
“Be careful not to touch anything, Mr. Markham,” warned Heath. “I’ve sent for the fingerprint experts—they’ll be here any minute now.”
Vance looked up in mock astonishment.
“Fingerprints? You don’t say—really! How delightful!—Imagine a johnnie in this enlightened day leaving his fingerprints for you to find.”
“All crooks aren’t clever, Mr. Vance,” declared Heath combatively.
“Oh, dear, no! They’d never be apprehended if they were. But, after all, Sergeant, even an authentic fingerprint merely means that the person who made it was dallying around at some time or other. It doesn’t indicate guilt.”
“Maybe so,” conceded Heath doggedly. “But I’m here to tell you that if I get any good honest-to-God fingerprints outa this devastated area, it’s not going so easy with the bird that made ’em.”
Vance appeared to be shocked. “You positively terrify me, Sergeant. Henceforth I shall adopt mittens as a permanent addition to my attire. I’m always handling the furniture and the teacups and the various knickknacks in the houses where I call, don’t y’ know.”
Markham interposed himself at this point, and suggested they make a tour of inspection while waiting for the Medical Examiner.
“They didn’t add anything much to the usual methods,” Heath pointed out. “Killed the girl, and then ripped things wide open.”
The two rooms had apparently been thoroughly ransacked. Clothes and various articles were strewn about the floor. The doors of both clothes-closets (there was one in each room) were open, and to judge from the chaos in the bedroom closet, it had been hurriedly searched; although the closet off of the living-room, which was given over to the storage of infrequently used items, appeared to have been ignored. The drawers of the dressing-table and chest had been partly emptied on to the floor, and the bedclothes had been snatched away and the mattress turned back. Two chairs and a small occasional table were upset; several vases were broken, as if they had been searched and then thrown down in the wrath of disappointment; and the Marie Antoinette mirror had been broken. The escritoire was open, and its pigeonholes had been emptied in a jumbled pile upon the blotter. The doors of the Boule cabinet swung wide, and inside there was the same confusion of contents that marked the interior of the escritoire. The bronze-and-porcelain lamp on the end of the library-table was lying on its side, its satin shade torn where it had struck the sharp corner of a silver bonbonnière.
Two objects in the general disarray particularly attracted my attention—a black metal document-box of the kind purchasable at any stationery store, and a large jewel-case of sheet steel with a circular inset lock. The latter of these objects was destined to play a curious and sinister part in the investigation to follow.
The document-box, which was now empty, had been placed on the library-table, next to the overturned lamp. Its lid was thrown back, and the key was still in the lock. In all the litter and disorganization of the room, this box seemed to be the one outstanding indication of calm and orderly activity on the part of the wrecker.
The jewel-case, on the other hand, had been violently wrenched open. It sat on the dressing-table in the bedroom, dinted and twisted out of shape by the terrific leverage that had been necessary to force it, and beside it lay a brass-handled, cast-iron poker which had evidently been brought from the living-room and used as a makeshift chisel with which to prize open the lock.
Vance had glanced but casually at the different objects in the rooms as we made our rounds, but when he came to the dressing-table, he paused abruptly. Taking out his monocle, he adjusted it carefully, and leaned over the broken jewel-case.
“Most extr’ordin’ry!” he murmured, tapping the edge of the lid with his gold pencil. “What do you make of that, Sergeant?”
Heath had been eyeing Vance with narrowed lids as the latter bent over the dressing-table.
“What’s in your mind, Mr. Vance?” he, in turn, asked.
“Oh, more than you could ever guess,” Vance answered lightly. “But just at the moment I was toying with the idea that this steel
