“As it was,” said Leslie promptly.
“—well, we’ve learnt something,” continued Coldwell. “It brings him into a new list, so to speak. He’s in the people-who-do-strange-things class, and that makes him stand out from the mass of law-abiding citizens.”
They passed swiftly down Roehampton Lane, climbed the little slope that carried them over the railway bridge, and had reached the middle of the common when Chief Inspector Coldwell began to enlarge and illustrate his theory. Just ahead of them Leslie saw the rear lights of a car moving out from the side of the road.
“Never despise little cases,” he began, “because—”
There was a grinding of brakes; the car stopped so violently that Leslie’s nose touched the glass screen painfully.
“What’s wrong?” asked Coldwell sharply. He, too, had seen the car ahead, and his first thought was that his driver was avoiding a collision.
The police chauffeur was looking round.
“I’m sorry, sir; I was rather startled. Did you see a man lying on the sidewalk?”
“No—where?” asked the interested Coldwell.
The driver reversed and the car moved slowly backward. They saw a black something in the darkness, and then, as the machine moved back a few more feet, the headlamps showed the figure of a man.
Coldwell got down from the car slowly.
“It looks like a drunk,” he grumbled. “You’d better stay where you are, Leslie.”
But his foot had hardly touched the ground before she had followed.
Well enough Inspector Coldwell knew that this was no drunk. The attitude, the outstretched arms, the legs slightly doubled, told him, before he saw the little pool of blood on the sidewalk, that there was no life here.
For a second the two stood gazing down at the pitiable figure.
“Druze,” said the girl quietly. “Somehow I expected it.”
It was Druze, and he was dead. The heavy overcoat was buttoned across his breast, there was no sign of a hat, and his hands, ungloved, were tightly clenched. As she looked, Leslie saw a queer green glitter in the light of the motor-lamps.
“He has something in his left hand,” she said in a hushed voice, and, kneeling down, Inspector Coldwell prised loose the fingers, and the thing that the dead man held fell with a tinkle to the gravelled path.
Coldwell picked it up and examined it curiously. It was a large, square emerald in a platinum setting, one edge of which was broken, as though it had been torn forcibly from a larger ornament.
“That is queer,” he said.
She took the emerald from his hand and carried it nearer to the lamp. Now she knew that she had made no mistake. It was the pendant on the chain she had seen that evening glittering on Lady Raytham’s neck!
VI
In a few words she told her companion. For his part, he was too worried about her presence to comprehend fully.
“You had better get into the car, Leslie. Driver, take Miss Maughan—”
“I’ll stay here,” said Leslie in a low voice. “I’m not very shocked. And please don’t touch that overcoat.”
He was stooping to unfasten the button when she spoke.
“Not till you let me see it.”
Mr. Coldwell hesitated a moment and then stepped aside, and the girl bent over the figure, keeping her eyes averted from that white face.
“I thought so,” she said. “The second button has been fastened to the third buttonhole. Whoever killed him, put on his overcoat and buttoned it. Now you can unfasten it.”
Mr. Coldwell sent the chauffeur for assistance and resumed his examination of the body. The man had been shot at close range through the heart; the waistcoat had been burnt by the explosion. There were no other injuries that he could see. One side of the figure was yellow with dust, as though it had been dragged some distance along the ground.
“I wish you wouldn’t—”
Coldwell looked round in helpless distress. He had taken an electric hand-lamp from the car before he sent it away, and this he had placed on the path so that the rays spread fan-shape over the body.
“Couldn’t you wait at a little distance?”
“Please don’t worry about me, Mr. Coldwell,” said Leslie. There was no tremor in her voice, he noted with satisfaction. “I am not going to faint; you seem to forget that the majority of nurses are women, and death isn’t so horrible to me as some expressions of life. Can I help you at all? I’ve got a tiny little pencil lamp in my bag.”
He scratched his chin.
“I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “You might look in the road and see if you can find any marks of a body being dragged, and then search around a bit.”
She got out the lamp, which, in spite of its smallness, gave a very bright light, and carried out his instructions methodically. She had not to look far before she found the traces she sought—a serpentine smear that reached from the centre of the road to the sidewalk. There were stains, little red smudges that were still wet when she put her finger to them.
The traffic conditions were favourable to an undisturbed search, for the road was unusually free from traffic. One motorbus lumbered past, a homeward-bound limousine from town was succeeded by another, and if the chauffeurs were interested in the spectacle of a man kneeling by what looked like a heap of rags on the sidewalk, the occupants of the cars did not apparently share their curiosity.
She paced the trail, judged it to be between twelve and thirteen feet from the place where the body was found. On the other side of the footpath was rough common land, grass and bushes in irregular patches. She began to search the rough; and here she had an unusual reward, for, passing round a thick low bush, she saw, lying together on the grass, a number of objects. The first was a fat pocketbook that had been opened
