He said: “That’s very interesting, Mr. Nark. Strange, isn’t it, Fox? Mr. Nark has evidently,”—He fumbled for the magic word, — “evidently made the same deductions as we have, from the evidence in hand.”

Fox gave his superior a bewildered and disgusted glance. Alleyn said rather loudly: “See what I mean, Fox?”

Fox saw. “Very striking, sir,” he said. “We’ll have to get you into the force, Mr. Nark.”

Mr. Nark buttoned his coat.

“What’ll you take, gentlemen?” he asked.

But it was heavy going. To get any sense out of him Alleyn had to flatter, hint, and cajole. A direct suggestion threw him into a fever of incoherence, at a hint of doubt he became huffy and mysterious. As she seemed to be the only woman in the case, Alleyn attempted to crystallize on Decima.

“Miss Moore,” he said at last, “is naturally very much upset by Mr. Watchman’s death.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Nark. “Is she? She may be. P’raps! I don’t know anything about women. She may be. Huh!”

Alleyn achieved a knowing laugh in which Fox joined.

“You look below the surface, I see,” said Alleyn.

“I base my deductions on fact. Take an example,” said Mr. Nark. His third drink, a Treble Extra, had begun to have a mellowing effect. His native burr returned to his usually careful utterance and he smiled knowingly. “Take an example. I don’t say it’s true to natur’. It’s an illustration. A parrible. Ef I takes a stroll up-along Apple Lane of a warm night and hears a courting couple t’other side of hedge in old Jim Moore’s orchard, I draws my own conclusions, doan’t I?”

“No doubt.”

“Ess. And ef,” said Mr. Nark, “ef I do bide thurr, not with idea of eavesdropping but only to reflect and ponder in my deep bitter manner, on the wiles of females in gineral, and ef I yurrs a female voice I axpects to yurr, and a maskeline voice I doan’t axpects to yurr, and ef” continued Mr. Nark fighting his way to the end of his sentence, “I says ‘Hullo!’ to myself and passes on a step, and ef I meet the owner of the maskeline voice I did axpect to yurr, standing sly and silent in hedge… what do I say? Wait a bit. Doan’t tell me. I’ll tell you. I says, ‘Durn it!’ I says, ‘Thurr’ll be bloodshed along of this-yurr if us doan’t looks out!’ And ef I bides a twelvemonth or more and nothing happens, and then something does happen, bloody and murderous, what do I say then?”

Mr. Nark raised his hand as a signal that this question also was rhetorical, and paused for so long that Fox clenched both his fists and Alleyn had time to light a cigarette.

“I sez,” said Mr. Nark loudly, “not a damn thing.”

“What!” ejaculated Alleyn.

“Not a damn thing. But I thinks like a furnace.”

“What do you think, Mr. Nark?” asked Alleyn with difficulty.

“I thinks ’tis better to yold my tongue ef I want to keep breath in my body. And I yolds it. ’Ess fay, I be mum and I stays mum.”

Mr. Nark brought off a mysterious gesture with his right forefinger, leered knowingly at Alleyn, and tacked rapidly towards the door. Once there, he turned to deliver his last word.

“Doan’t you go calling my words ‘statements,’ ” he said. “They’re a n’allegory, and a n’allegory’s got nothing to do with the law. You doan’t trip me up thicky-fashion. I know natur of an oath. Searchy la fem.”

Chapter XVI

Alleyn Exceeds his Duty

i

After they had lunched Alleyn brought his report up-to-date, and Fox, sitting solemnly at the parlour table, typed it in duplicate. Alleyn had a brief interview with Abel Pomeroy and returned with three tumblers. One of these he smashed to splinters with the poker, keeping the pieces together, and emptying them into a tin. The other two he wrapped up and placed, with a copy of his report, in his case. He also spent some time throwing down darts and finding that they stuck in the floor. These employments at an end, they drove to Illington. The day had turned gloomy, heavy rain was falling, and the road was slimy.

Alleyn dropped Fox at Woolworth’s and went on to Dr. Shaw’s house at the end of the principal street. He was shown into a surgery that smelt of leather, iodine, and ether. Here he found Dr. Shaw, who was expecting him. Alleyn liked the look of Dr. Shaw. He had an air of authority and a pleasing directness of manner.

“I hope I’m not an infernal nuisance, coming at this hour,” said Alleyn. “Your patients—”

“That’s all right. Surgery doesn’t start till two. Old trot sitting out there in the waiting room… Malade imaginaire … Do her good to wait a bit, she plagues my life out. Sit down. What do you want to talk about?”

“Principally about the wound and the dart. I’ve read the police report of the inquest.”

“Thought it rather full of gaps? So it is. Mordant, the coroner you know, is a dry old stick, but he’s got his wits about him. Respectable bacteriologist in his day. He and Harper got their heads together, I imagine, and decided just how much would be good for the jury. What about the wound?”

“Were there any traces of cyanide, prussic acid, or whatever the blasted stuff is?”

“No. We got a man from London, you know. One of your tame experts. Good man. Mordant and I were both there when he made his tests. We didn’t expect a positive result from the wound.”

“Why not?”

“Two reasons. He’d bled pretty freely and, if the stuff was introduced on the dart, what wasn’t absorbed would be washed away by blood. Also, the stuff’s very volatile.”

“They found the trace on the dart.”

“Yes. Oates kept his head and put the dart into a clean soda-water bottle and corked it up. Couldn’t do that with the finger.”

“Even so, wouldn’t you expect the stuff to evaporate on the dart?”

Dr. Shaw uttered a deep growl and scratched his cheek.

“Perfectly correct,” he said, “you would. Puzzling.”

“Doesn’t it look as if the Scheele’s acid, or rather the fifty-per-cent prussic acid solution, must have been put on the dart a very short time before Oates bottled it up?”

“It does. Thought so all along.”

“How long was it, after the event, that you got there?”

“Within half an hour after his death.”

“Yes. Now, look here. For private consumption only, would you expect a cyanide solution, however concentrated, to kill a man after that fashion?”

Dr. Shaw thrust his hands in his pockets and stuck out his lower lip.

“I’m not a toxicologist,” he said. “Mordant is, and we’ve taken the king-pin’s opinion. Watchman, on his own statement, had a strong idiosyncrasy for cyanide. He told Parish and Cubitt about this the night before the tragedy.”

“Yes. I saw that in the files. It’s good enough, you think?”

“We’ve got no precedent for the affair. The experts seem to think it good enough. That dart was thrown with considerable force. It penetrated to the bone, or rather, it actually entered the finger at such an angle that it must have lain along the bone. It’s good enough.”

“There was no trace of cyanide in the mouth?”

“None. But that doesn’t preclude the possibility of his having taken it by the mouth.”

“Oh Lord!” sighed Alleyn, “nor it does. Did the room stink of it?”

“No, it stank of brandy. So did the body. Brandy, by the way, is one of the antidotes given for cyanide poisoning. Along with artificial respiration, potassium permanganate, glucose, and half a dozen other remedies, none of which is much use if the cyanide has got into the blood stream.”

“Have you a pair of scales?” asked Alleyn abruptly. “Chemical scales or larger, but accurate scales?”

“What? Yes. Yes, I have. Why?”

“Fox, my opposite number, will be here in a minute. He’s calling at the police station for the fragments of broken tumbler. I’ve got a rather fantastic notion. Nothing in it I dare say. We’ve a pair of scales at the pub but I thought you might be amused if we did a bit of our stuff here.”