XVIII
The White Tablet
Within the minute that case was to be immeasurably strengthened. An exclamation broke from Hanaud. He sprang to his feet and turned on the light of a green-shaded reading lamp, which stood upon the ledge of the bureau. He was holding now under the light a small drawer, which he had removed from the front of the bureau. Very gingerly he lifted some little thing out of it, something that looked like a badge that men wear in their buttonholes. He laid it down upon the blotting paper; and in that room of death laughed harshly.
He beckoned to Jim.
“Come and look!”
What Jim saw was a thin, small, barbed iron dart, with an iron stem. He had no need to ask its nature, for he had seen its likeness that morning in the Treatise of the Edinburgh Professor. This was the actual head of Simon Harlowe’s poison-arrow.
“You have found it!” said Jim in a voice that shook.
“Yes.”
Hanaud gave it a little push, and said thoughtfully:
“A negro thousands of miles away sits outside his hut in the Kombé country and pounds up his poison seed and mixes it with red clay, and smears it thick and slab over the shaft of his fine new arrow, and waits for his enemy. But his enemy does not come. So he barters it, or gives it to his white friend the trader on the Shiré river. And the trader brings it home and gives it to Simon Harlowe of the Maison Grenelle. And Simon Harlowe lends it to a professor in Edinburgh, who writes about it in a printed book and sends it back again. And in the end, after all its travels, it comes to the tenement of Jean Cladel in a slum of Dijon, and is made ready in a new way to do its deadly work.”
For how much longer Hanaud would have moralised over the arrow in this deplorable way, no man can tell. Happily Jim Frobisher was reprieved from listening to him by the shutting of a door below and the noise of voices in the passage.
“The Commissary!” said Hanaud, and he went quickly down the stairs.
Jim heard him speaking in a low tone for quite a long while, and no doubt was explaining the position of affairs. For when he brought the Commissary and the doctor up into the room he introduced Jim as one about whom they already knew.
“This is that Monsieur Frobisher,” he said.
The Commissary, a younger and more vivacious man than Girardot, bowed briskly to Jim and looked towards the contorted figure of Jean Cladel.
Even he could not restrain a little gesture of repulsion. He clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“He is not pretty, that one!” he said. “Most certainly he is not pretty.”
Hanaud crossed again to the bureau and carefully folded the dart around with paper.
“With your permission, Monsieur,” he said ceremoniously to the Commissary, “I shall take this with me. I will be responsible for it.” He put it away in his pocket and looked at the doctor, who was stooping by the side of Jean Cladel. “I do not wish to interfere, but I should be glad to have a copy of the medical report. I think that it might help me. I think it will be found that this murder was committed in a way peculiar to one man.”
“Certainly you shall have a copy of the report, Monsieur Hanaud,” replied the young Commissary in a polite and formal voice.
Hanaud laid a hand on Jim’s arm.
“We are in the way, my friend. Oh, yes, in spite of Monsieur le Commissaire’s friendly protestations. This is not our affair. Let us go!” He conducted Jim to the door and turned about. “I do not wish to interfere,” he repeated, “but it is possible that the shutters and the window will bear the traces of the murderer’s fingers. I don’t think it probable, for that animal had taken his precautions. But it is possible, for he left in a great hurry.”
The Commissary was overwhelmed with gratitude.
“Most certainly we will give our attention to the shutters and the windowsill.”
“A copy of the fingerprints, if any are found?” Hanaud suggested.
“Shall be at Monsieur Hanaud’s disposal as early as possible,” the Commissary agreed.
Jim experienced a pang of regret that Monsieur Bex was not present at the little exchange of civilities. The Commissary and Hanaud were so careful not to tread upon one another’s toes and so politely determined that their own should not be trodden upon. Monsieur Bex could not but have revelled in the correctness of their deportment.
Hanaud and Frobisher went downstairs into the street. The neighbourhood had not been aroused. A couple of sergents-de-ville stood in front of the door. The street of Gambetta was still asleep and indifferent to the crime which had taken place in one of its least respectable houses.
“I shall go to the Prefecture,” said Hanaud. “They have given me a little office there with a sofa. I want to put away the arrow head before I go to my hotel.”
“I shall come with you,” said Jim. “It will be a relief to walk for a little in the
