LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

mind. He had tried to laugh at his own folly, then had grown angry

      with himself, but finally had settled down to a dismayed acceptance

      of a wild infatuation.

      He had no idea who Mlle. Dorian was; he did not even know her exact

      nationality, but he strongly suspected there was a strain of Eastern

      blood in her veins. Although she was quite young, apparently little

      more than twenty years of age, she dressed like a woman of unlimited

      means, and although all her visits had been at night he had had

      glimpses of the big car which had aroused Mrs. M'Gregor's displeasure.

      Yes--so ran his musings, as, pipe in mouth, he rested his chin in his

      hands and stared grimly into the fire--she had always come at night

      and always alone. He had supposed her to be a Frenchwoman, but an

      unmarried French girl of good family does not make late calls, even

      upon a medical man, unattended. Had he perchance unwittingly made

      himself a party to the escapade of some unruly member of a noble

      family? From the first he had shrewdly suspected the ailments of Mlle.

      Dorian to be imaginary--Mlle. Dorian? It was an odd name.

      "I shall be imagining she is a disguised princess if I wonder about

      her any more!" he muttered angrily.

      Detecting himself in the act of heaving a weary sigh, he coughed in

      self-reproval and reached into a pigeon-hole for the MS. of his

      unfinished paper on "Snake Poisons and Their Antidotes." By chance he

      pulled out the brief account, written the same morning, of his uncanny

      experience during the night. He read it through reflectively.

      It was incomplete. A certain mental haziness which he had noted upon

      awakening had in some way obscured the facts. His memory of the dream

      had been imperfect. Even now, whilst recognizing that some feature of

      the experience was missing from his written account, he could not

      identify the omission. But one memory arose starkly before him--that

      of the cowled man who had stood behind the curtains. It had power to

      chill him yet. The old incredulity returned and methodically he

      re-examined the contents of some of the table drawers. Ere long,

      however, he desisted impatiently.

      "What the devil could a penniless doctor have hidden in his desk that

      was worth stealing!" he said aloud. "I must avoid cold salmon and

      cucumber in future."

      He tossed the statement aside and turned to his scientific paper.

      There came knock at the door.

      "Come in!" snapped Stuart irritably; but the next moment he had turned,

      eager-eyed to the servant who had entered.

      "Inspector Dunbar has called, sir."

      "Oh, all right," said Stuart, repressing another sigh. "Show him in

      here."

      There entered, shortly, a man of unusual height, a man gaunt and

      square both of figure and of face. He wore his clothes and his hair

      untidily. He was iron grey and a grim mouth was ill concealed by the

      wiry moustache. The most notable features of a striking face were the

      tawny leonine eyes, which could be fierce, which could be pensive and

      which were often kindly.

      "Good evening, doctor," he said--and his voice was pleasant and

      unexpectedly light in tome. "Hope I don't intrude."

      "Not at all, Inspector," Stuart assured him.

      "Make yourself comfortable in the armchair and fill your pipe."

      "Thanks," said Dunbar. "I will." He took out his pipe and reached out

      a long arm for the tobacco jar. "I came to see if you could give me a

      tip on a matter that has cropped up."

      "Something in my line?" asked Stuart, a keen professional look coming

      momentarily into his eyes.

      "It's supposed to be a poison case, although I can't see it myself,"

      answered the detective--to whom Keppel Stuart's unusual knowledge of

      poisons had been of service in the past; "but if what I suspect is

      true, it's a very big case all the same."

      Laying down his pipe, which he had filled but not lighted, Inspector

      Dunbar pulled out from the inside pocket of his tweed coat a bulging

      note-book and extracted therefrom some small object wrapped up in

      tissue paper. Unwrapping this object, he laid it upon the table.

      "Tell me what that is, doctor," he said, "and I shall be obliged."

      Stuart peered closely at that which lay before him. It was a piece of

      curiously shaped gold, cunningly engraved in a most unusual way.

      Rather less than an inch in length, it formed a crescent made up of

      six oval segments joined one to another, the sixth terminating in a

      curled point. The first and largest segment ended jaggedly where it

      had evidently been snapped off from the rest of the ornament--if the

      thing had formed part of an ornament. Stuart looked up, frowning in

      a puzzled way.

      "It is a most curious fragment of jewellery--possibly of Indian

      origin," he said.

      Inspector Dunbar lighted his pipe and tossed the match-end into the

      fire. "But what does it represent?" he asked.

      "Oh, as to that--I said a _curious_ fragment advisedly, because I

      cannot imagine any woman wearing such a beastly thing. It is the _tail

      of a scorpion._"

      "Ah!" cried Dunbar, the tawny eyes glittering with excitement. "The

      tail of a scorpion! I thought so! And Sowerby would have it that it

      represented the stem of a Cactus or Prickly Pear!"

      "Not so bad a guess," replied Stuart. "There _are_ resemblances--not

      in the originals but in such a miniature reproduction as this. He was

      wrong, however. May I ask where you obtained the fragment?"

      "I'm here to tell you, doctor, for now that I know it's a scorpion's

      tail I know that I'm out of my depth as well. You've travelled in

      the East and lived in the East--two very different things. Now, while

      you were out there, in India, China, Burma, and so on, did you ever

      come

Скачать книгу