“Ah?” returned de Grandin. “What did the excellent Murphy observe?”
“Plenty,” Costello replied laconically. “Ye’ll be seein’ it for yerself in a minute.”
Inside the Kolisko house was that peculiar hush which does reverence to the Grim Reaper’s visits. Acting on telephoned instructions, Officer Murphy mounted guard before the door, permitting no one to enter the place, and the scene in the small, poorly lighted livingroom was exactly as he had come upon it several hours earlier.
Like most dyed-in-the-wool students, Kolisko had regarded his home merely as a place to sleep, eat and store books. The room was lined from floor to ceiling on all sides with rough deal shelving which groaned and sagged under the weight of ponderous volumes in every language known to print. Piles of other books, unable to find accommodation on the shelves, were littered about the floor. The rough, benchlike table and the littered, untidy desk which stood between the two small windows were also piled high with books.
Between the desk and table, flat on its back, staring endlessly at the rough whitewashed ceiling with bulging, sightless eyes, lay the relic of Professor Kolisko. Clothed in a tattered bathrobe and soiled pajamas the body lay, and it was not a pretty sight even to a medical man to whom death in its unloveliest phases is no stranger. Kolisko had been thin to the point of emaciation, and his scrawniness was accentuated in death. His white-thatched head was thrown back and bent grotesquely to one side, his straggling white beard thrust upward truculently, and his lower jaw had fallen downward with the flaccidity of death, half an inch or so of tongue protruding beyond the line of his lower teeth. Any doctor, soldier or undertaker—any man whose business has to do habitually with death—could not fail to recognize the signs. The man was dead, and had been so for upward of seven hours.
“Howly-Mither!” Costello’s brogue came strongly to the surface as he blessed himself involuntarily. “Will ye be lookin’ at th’ awfulness o’ him, sors?”
“U’m,” murmured Jules de Grandin, sinking to one knee beside the corpse, raising the lolling head and fingering the back of the neck with quick, practiced hands, then brushing back the bristling beard to examine the scrawny throat attentively, “he had cause to be dead, this one. See, Friend Trowbridge”—taking my hand he guided my fingers slowly down the dead man’s neck, then pointed to the throat—“there is a clean fracture of the spine between the third and fourth dorsal vertebrae, probably involving a rupture of the cord, as well. The autopsy will disclose that. And here”—he tapped the throat with a well-manicured forefinger—“are the marks of strangulation. Mordieu, whatever gripped this poor one’s neck possessed a hold like Death himself, for he not only choked him, but broke his spine as well! If it were not for one thing, I should say such strength—such ferocity of grip—could only have been exerted by one of the great apes, but—”
He broke off, staring with preoccupied, unseeing eyes at the farther wall.
“But what, sor?” Costello prompted as the little man’s silence continued.
“Parbleu, it could not be an ape and leave such a thumb-mark, my friends,” de Grandin returned. “The gorilla, the orangutan, the chimpanzee, all have such strength of hand as to accomplish what we see here, but they are not human, no matter how much they parody mankind. Their thumbs are undeveloped; the thumb which closed on this one’s neck was long and thin, more like a finger than a thumb. See for yourselves, it closed about the throat, meeting the fingers which clasped it on the other side. Mordieu, if we are to find this murderer we must look for one with twice the length and five times the strength of hand of the average man. Bethink you—this one’s grip was great enough to snap Kolisko’s spine like a clay-pipe stem by merely squeezing his neck! Dieu de Dieu, but he will be an uncomfortable one to meet in the dark!”
“Sergeant Costello,” Murphy’s hail came sharply from the cottage door, “they’re cornin’; Coroner Martin an’ Dr. Schuester just drove up!”
“All right, Murphy, good lad!” Costello returned, then glanced sharply at de Grandin. “Leave him be, Doc,” he ordered. “If th’ coroner an’ Dr. Schuester catch us monkeyin’ with their property there’ll be hell poppin’ at headquarters.”
“Very good, my friend,” de Grandin rejoined, rising and brushing the dust from his trousers knees, “we have seen as much of the body as we desire. Let them have it and perform their gruesome rites; we shall look elsewhere for what we seek.”
Coroner Martin and his physician came bustling in almost as the little Frenchman ceased speaking, glanced casually at Costello and suspiciously at de Grandin and me, then went at their official duties with only a mumbled word of greeting.
“What do you make of it?” I inquired as we drove toward my house.
“Eh bien, as yet I make nothing,” de Grandin returned. “The man was killed by paralysis resulting from a broken neck, although the pressure on his windpipe would have been sufficient to have slain him, had it but continued long enough. We know his murderer possessed hands of extraordinary strength and size, and is, therefore, in all probability, a man of more than usual height. Thus far we step with assurance. When the coroner has finished with the deceased gentleman’s premises, we shall afford ourselves the pleasure of a protracted search; before that we shall request our good friend Costello to inquire into Monsieur Kolisko’s antecedents and discover if he possessed any enemies, especially any enemies capable of doing him to death in this manner. Meantime I famish for my breakfast. I am hungry as a cormorant.”
The boasted appetite was no mere figure of speech. Three bowls of steaming cereal, two generous helpings of bacon and eggs, half a dozen cups of well-creamed coffee disappeared into his interior before he pushed back his chair and lighted a rank-smelling French cigarette with a sigh of utter content. “Eh bien, but it is difficult to think on an empty stomach,” he assured me as he blew a column of smoke toward the ceiling. “Me, I am far from my best when there is nothing but flatulence beneath my belt. I require stimu—Mon Dieu, what a fool I am!”
Striking his forehead with the heel of his hand, he rose so abruptly that his chair almost capsized behind him,
“What’s the matter?” I asked, but he waved my question and me aside with an impatient hand.
“Non, non, do not stop me, do not hinder me, my friend!” he ordered. “Me, I have important duties to perform, if it be not too late to do them. Go upon your errands of mercy, Friend Trowbridge, and should you chance to return before I quit the surgery, I pray you leave me undisturbed. I have to do that which is needful, and I must do it uninterrupted, if you please.”
Having thus served notice on me that I would be unwelcome in my own workshop, he turned and fled toward the front door like a luckless debtor pursued by collectors.
It was nearly four o’clock that afternoon when I returned from my round of calls and tiptoed past the surgery door, only to find my caution unnecessary, for de Grandin sat in the cool, darkened library, smoking a cigar and chuckling over some inane story in L’ Illustration.
“Finish the important duties?” I asked regarding him ironically.
“But certainly,” he returned. “First, dear friend, I must apologize most humbly for my so abominable rudeness of this morning. It is ever my misfortune, I fear, to show only incivility to those who most deserve my courtesy, but I was all afire with the necessity of haste when I spoke. Great emptyhead that I was, I had completely forgotten for the moment that one of the best places to seek clues of a murder is the person of the victim himself, and when I did remember I was almost beside myself until I ascertained to which entrepreneur des pompes funebres—how do you say it? undertaker?—my God, what a language!—Monsieur Kolisko’s body had been entrusted by the coroner. Friend Costello informed me that Monsieur Mitchell was in charge, and to the excellent Mitchell I hurried post-haste, begging that he would permit me one little minute alone with the deceased before he commenced his ministrations.
“H’m, and did you find anything?” I asked.
/> “Parbleu, yes; I found almost too much. From the nails of Monsieur Kolisko’s hands I rescued some fragments, and in your surgery I subjected them to microscopic examination. They proved to be—what do you say?”
“Tobacco?” I hazarded.
“Tobacco!” he scoffed. “Friend Trowbridge, sometimes I think you foolish; at others I fear you are merely stupid. Beneath the dead man’s fingernails I found some bits of human skin—and a fragment of human hair.”
“Well,” I returned unenthusiastically, “what of it? Kolisko was an exceedingly untidy sort of person—the kind who cared so little for social amenities that he was apt to scratch himself vigorously when he chose and probably he was also addicted to the habit of scrabbling through his beard with his fingers. Most of those European scientists with birds’ nests sprouting from their chins are that sort, you know. He was shockingly uncouth, and—”
“And you annoy me most thoroughly, Friend Trowbridge,” the little Frenchman broke in. “Listen, attend me, regard that which I am about to tell you: The skin and hair which I did find were black, my friend, black as bitumen, and subjected to chemical reagents, showed themselves to be strongly impregnated with natron, oil of cedar and myrrh. What have you to say now?”
“Why—”
“And if these things suggest an Egyptian mummy to you, as they may if you think steadily for the next ten or more years, I make so bold as to ask what would a professor of psychology be doing in contact with a mummy. Hein? Answer me that, if you please. Had he been an Egyptologist, or even a student of comparative anatomy, there would be reason for it, but a psychologist—it does not make sense!”
“Well, then, why bother about it?” I retorted.
“Ah, but I think maybe, perhaps there is an answer to the riddle, after all,” he insisted. “Recall the events of last night, if you please. Remember how that young Monsieur Ratliff came bawling like a frightened calf to our door, begging to be taken in and protected from something which assaulted him in the public thoroughfares. Recollect how we suspected him of an overindulgence in alcohol, and how, as we were about to turn him out, there appeared at our window a most unpleasant-looking thing which made mock of Jules de Grandin’s marksmanship. Parbleu, yes, you will recall all that, as well as that the ungrateful Ratliff child did sneak away from the house without so much as saying ‘thank you’ for our hospitality while we were out with Sergeant Costello viewing Monsieur Kolisko’s remains.”
“Then you’d suggest—” I began incredulously, but he rose with an impatient shrug.
“Ah, bah, I think nothing, my friend,” he assured me. “He who thinks without knowing is a fool. A connection there may be between that which we saw last night and that which we viewed this morning. We shall see, perhaps. I have an engagement to search Kolisko’s house with Sergeant Costello this evening, and I suggest you accompany us. There may be that there which shall cause your eyes to pop from out your face with wonder. Meantime, I hear visitors in the reception room. Go to your duties, my friend. Some neurotic old lady undoubtlessly desires you to sympathize with her latest symptoms.”
“Well, sor,” confided Sergeant Costello as he, de Grandin and I set out for the Kolisko cottage that evening, “this case beats th’ Jews, an’ th’ Jews beat the devil.”
“Indeed?” responded de Grandin politely.
“It sure does. We’ve been over Kolisko’s antecedents, as ye might call ’em, an’ th’ devil a thing can we find that might lead us to a clue as to who killed him. ‘Twas little enough they knew about him, at best, for he was a standoffish old felly, wid never a word for annybody, except when he wanted sumpin, which warn’t often. He had a few Polack cronies, but they wuz few an’ far between. Five months ago a felly broke into his house an’ stole some stuff o’ triflin’ value, an’ shot up a state trooper while tryin’ to escape to th’ next town. Kolisko appeared agin ’im at th’ trial, as wuz his dooty, for he wuz subpenaed, an’ later visited ’im in jail, I understand, but this felly—name o’ Heschler, he wuz—didn’t take anny too kindly to th’ professor’s visits, an’ he cut ’em out.”
“Ah,” de Grandin nursed his narrow chin in the cradle of his hand, “perhaps it is that this Heschler harbored malice and wreaked vengeance on Monsieur Kolisko for the part he had in his conviction?”
“P’raps,” agreed Costello shortly, “but ’tain’t likely.”
“And why not?” the Frenchman demanded shortly. Like most men who keep their own counsel, he was easily annoyed by others’ reticence.
“Because they burned him at Camden last night, sor.” “Burned? How do you mean—”
“Sure, burned him. Bumped ’im off, rubbed ’im out, gave ’im th’ chair—electrocuted ’im. He was a murderer, warn’t he?” Costello elucidated.
“U’m,” the Frenchman gulped over the information like on trying to clear his mouth of an unpalatable morsel, “you are doubtless right, Sergeant; we may regard this Heschler as eliminated—perhaps.”
“P’raps?” echoed the amazed Irishman as I brought the car to a halt before the cottage door. “P’raps me neck! If you’ll listen to me, I’ll say he’s been eliminated altogether entirely be th’ state executioner!”
Our search was startlingly unproductive. A few letters in envelopes with foreign postmarks, receipts for small bills for groceries and kindred household items, one or two invitations to meetings of learned societies—this was the sum total produced by an hour’s rummaging among the dead man’s papers.
“Tiens, it would seem we have come on the chase of the wild goose,” de Grandin admitted disconsolately, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a pale blue silk handkerchief. “Zut, it seems impossible that any man should have so much paper of so little importance. Me, I think that—”
“Here’s sumpin that might help us, if it’s papers ye’re after,” Costello interrupted, appearing at the kitchen door with a rough wooden box in his hand. *T found it behint th’ stove, sor. Most of it seems of little enough account, but you might find sumpin that’d—”
“Aside, stand aside, my friend!” the Frenchman ordered, leaping on the box like a famished cat on a mouse and scattering its contents over the living-room table. “What have we here? Mordieu, another receipt from that twenty-times-damned Public Service Company! Name of a rooster, did the man do nothing but contract and pay bills for electric light? Another one—and another! Grand Dieu, if I find but one more of these receipts I shall require a strait-waistcoat to restrain myself. What, another—ah, triomphe! At last we find something else!” From the pile of scrambled papers he unearthed a small, black-leather book and began riffling through its pages.
Pausing to read an inscription at random, he regarded the page with upraised brows and pursed lips, seated himself beside the table and brought his eyes to within a few inches of the small, crabbed writing with which the book seemed filled.
Five minutes he sat thus studying the memoranda, his brows gradually rising till I feared they would impinge upon the line of his smoothly combed blond hair. Finally: “My friends, this is of the importance,” he assured us, looking quickly from one to the other with his queer, direct glance. “Monsieur Kolisko made these entries in his diary in mingled Polish and French. I shall endeavor to render them into English tonight, and tomorrow morning we shall go over them together. Thus far I have read little, but that little may explain much, or I am much mistaken.”
“Trowbridge, my friend,” de Grandin requested the following morning when my round of calls was finished, “will you please read what I have written? All night I labored over this translation, and this morning my eyes are not sufficient to the task of reading my own script.”
He thrust a sheaf of neatly written foolscap into my hands, then lighted a cigarette and leaned back in his chair, his small hands locked behind his head, his eyes half closed, as he surveyed Costello and me lazily.
Glancing from de Grandin to the waiting detective, I set my pince-nez firmly on my nose and began:
April 5—Michel was here again last night, nagging me with his silly talk of the soul and its immortality. To think that one so well educated should entertain such childish ideas! I would have ordered him from the house in anger, as I did once before, had he not been more than usually insulting. After taunting me with the old story about a body’s being weighed a few minutes after death and found lighter than before, thereby proving that something of material weight had passed from it, he challenged me to prove the nonexistence of any entity separate from the physical being. Fool! It is he who asserts the proposition, not I. Yet I must think of some way to confound him, or he will be everlastingly reminding me that I failed to meet his test.
April 10—Michel is a greater fool than I thought. I hold him and his faith in the hollow of my hand, and by his own act. Last night he proposed the wildest scheme ever broached by man. The burglar who broke into my house last month has been sentenced to death for killing a policeman. Michel would have me see the fellow in prison, arrange for a transmigration of his soul to a body which he will secure, and await results of the experiment. It is a childish folly; I insult my own intelligence by agreeing to it, but I must silence Michel and his everlasting patter of the soul’s immortality. I shall undertake the task, if only to prove my cousin a fool.
May 16—Yesterday I saw Heschler in prison. The poor fellow was almost beside himself with joy when I told him of Michel’s wild plan. Not dying, but fear of punishment in the world to come seems to terrify the man. If I can provide a tenement for his soul which will enable it to remain away from the seat of judgment a little longer, he will be content, even though he has to live in the body of a child, a cripple or one already bowed with age. Living out the span of life in the second body we provide, he will so conduct himself as to win pardon for misdeeds committed in the frame he now wears, he vows. Poor, hoodwinked fool! Like all Christians, he is bound hand and foot by the old superstitions which have come down to us through the ages. That Heschler, the burglar, should adhere to the Christus myth, the God fairy-tale, is not surprising, for he is but an ignorant clod; but that my cousin Michel Kolisko, a learned man, should give credit to beliefs which were outworn and disproved in the nineteenth century is beyond my understanding.
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