«We are agreed, Mr. Coroner, that deceased died of the effects of a blow upon the spine, but how that injury was inflicted we consider that there is not sufficient evidence to show.»
Mr. Parker and Sir Julian Freke walked up the road together.
«I had absolutely no idea until I saw Lady Levy this morning,» said the doctor, «that there was any idea of connecting this matter with the disappearance of Sir Reuben. The suggestion was perfectly monstrous, and could only have grown up in the mind of that ridiculous police officer. If I had had any idea what was in his mind I could have disabused him and avoided all this.»
«I did my best to do so,» said Parker, «as soon as I was called in to the Levy case — »
«Who called you in, if I may ask?» enquired Sir Julian.
«Well, the household first of all, and then Sir Reuben's uncle, Mr. Levy of Portman Square, wrote to me to go on with the investigation.»
«And now Lady Levy has confirmed those instructions?»
«Certainly,» said Parker in some surprise.
Sir Julian was silent for a little time.
«I'm afraid I was the first person to put the idea into Sugg's head,» said Parker, rather penitently. «When Sir Reuben disappeared, my first step, almost, was to hunt up all the street accidents and suicides and so on that had turned up during the day, and I went down to see this Battersea Park body as a matter of routine. Of course, I saw that the thing was ridiculous as soon as I got there, but Sugg froze on to the idea — and it's true there was a good deal of resemblance between the dead man and the portraits I've seen of Sir Reuben.»
«A strong superficial likeness,» said Sir Julian. «The upper part of the face is a not uncommon type, and as Sir Reuben wore a heavy beard and there was no opportunity of comparing the mouths and chins, I can understand the idea occurring to anybody. But only to be dismissed at once. I am sorry,» he added, «as the whole matter has been painful to Lady Levy. You may know, Mr. Parker, that I am an old, though I should not call myself an intimate, friend of the Levys.»
«I understood something of the sort.»
«Yes. When I was a young man I — in short, Mr. Parker, I hoped once to marry Lady Levy.» (Mr. Parker gave the usual sympathetic groan.) «I have never married, as you know,» pursued Sir Julian. «We have remained good friends. I have always done what I could to spare her pain.»
«Believe me, Sir Julian,» said Parker, «that I sympathize very much with you and with Lady Levy, and that I did all I could to disabuse Inspector Sugg of this notion. Unhappily, the coincidence of Sir Reuben's being seen that evening in the Battersea Park Road — »
«Ah, yes,» said Sir Julian. «Dear me, here we are at home. Perhaps you would come in for a moment, Mr. Parker, and have tea or a whisky-and-soda or something.»
Parker promptly accepted this invitation, feeling that there were other things to be said.
The two men stepped into a square, finely furnished hall with a fireplace on the same side as the door, and a staircase opposite. The dining-room door stood open on their right, and as Sir Julian rang the bell a man-servant appeared at the far end of the hall.
«What will you take?» asked the doctor.
«After that dreadfully cold place,» said Parker, «what I really want is gallons of hot tea, if you, as a nerve specialist, can bear the thought of it.»
«Provided you allow of a judicious blend of China with it,» replied Sir Julian in the same tone, «I have no objection to make. Tea in the library at once,» he added to the servant, and led the way upstairs.
«I don't use the downstairs rooms much, except the dining-room,» he explained, as he ushered his guest into a small but cheerful library on the first floor. «This room leads out of my bedroom and is more convenient. I only live part of my time here, but it's very handy for my research work at the hospital. That's what I do there, mostly. It's a fatal thing for a theorist, Mr. Parker, to let the practical work get behindhand. Dissection is the basis of all good theory and all correct diagnosis. One must keep one's hand and eye in training. This place is far more important to me than Harley Street, and some day I shall abandon my consulting practice altogether and settle down here to cut up my subjects and write my books in peace. So many things in this life are a waste of time, Mr. Parker.»
Mr. Parker assented to this.
«Very often,» said Sir Julian, «the only time I get for any research work — necessitating as it does the keenest observation and the faculties at their acutest — has to be at night, after a long day's work and by artificial light, which, magnificent as the lighting of the dissecting room here is, is always more trying to the eyes than daylight. Doubtless your own work has to be carried on under even more trying conditions.»
«Yes, sometimes,» said Parker; «but then you see,» he added, «the conditions are, so to speak, part of the work.»
«Quite so, quite so,» said Sir Julian; «you mean that the burglar, for example, does not demonstrate his methods in the light of day, or plant the perfect footmark in the middle of a damp patch of sand for you to analyze.»
«Not as a rule,» said the detective, «but I have no doubt many of your diseases work quite as insidiously as any burglar.»
«They do, they do,» said Sir Julian, laughing, «and it is my pride, as it is yours, to track them down for the good of society. The neuroses, you know, are particularly clever criminals — they break out into as many disguises as — »
«As Leon Kestrel, the Master-Mummer,» suggested Parker, who read railway-stall detective stories on the principle of the 'busman's holiday.
«No doubt,» said Sir Julian, who did not, «and they cover up their tracks wonderfully. But when you can really investigate, Mr. Parker, and break up the dead, or for preference the living body with the scalpel, you always find the footmarks — the little trail of ruin or disorder left by madness or disease or drink or any other similar pest. But the difficulty is to trace them back, merely by observing the surface symptoms — the hysteria, crime, religion, fear, shyness, conscience, or whatever it may be; just as you observe a theft or a murder and look for the footsteps of the criminal, so I observe a fit of hysterics or an outburst of piety and hunt for the little mechanical irritation which has produced it.»
«You regard all these things as physical?»
«Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of another school of thought, Mr. Parker, but its exponents are mostly charlatans or self-deceivers. Sie haben sich so weit darin eingeheimnisst that, like Sludge the Medium, they are beginning to believe their own nonsense. I should like to have the exploring of some of their brains, Mr. Parker; I would show you the little faults and landslips in the cells — the misfiring and short — circuiting of the nerves, which produce these notions and these books. At least,» he added, gazing sombrely at his guest, «at least, if I could not quite show you to-day, I shall be able to do so to-morrow — or in a year's time — or before I die.»
He sat for some minutes gazing into the fire, while the red light played upon his tawny beard and struck out answering gleams from his compelling eyes.
Parker drank tea in silence, watching him. On the whole, however, he remained but little interested in the causes of nervous phenomena, and his mind strayed to Lord Peter, coping with the redoubtable Crimplesham down in Salisbury. Lord Peter had wanted him to come: that meant, either that Crimplesham was proving recalcitrant or that a clue wanted following. But Bunter had said that to-morrow would do, and it was just as well. After all the Battersea affair was not Parker's case; he had already wasted valuable time attending an inconclusive inquest, and he really ought to get on with his legitimate work. There was still Levy's secretary to see and the little matter of the Peruvian Oil to be looked into. He looked at his watch.