The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet. Burton Egbert Stevenson

really looking for was a place where he could kill himself unobserved."

      "How long a time elapsed after Parks announced the man before you and

       Mr. Vantine came downstairs?"

      "Half an hour, perhaps."

      Goldberger nodded.

      "Let's have Parks in," he said.

      I opened the door and called to Parks, who was sitting on the bottom step of the stair.

      Goldberger looked him over carefully as he stepped into the room; but there could be no two opinions about Parks. He had been with Vantine for eight or ten years, and the earmarks of the competent and faithful servant were apparent all over him.

      "Do you know this man?" Goldberger asked, with a gesture toward the body.

      "No, sir," said Parks. "I never saw him till about an hour ago, when

       Rogers called me downstairs and said there was a man to see Mr.

       Vantine."

      "Who is Rogers?"

      "He's the footman, sir. He answered the door when the man rang."

      "Well, and then what happened?"

      "I took his card up to Mr. Vantine, sir."

      "Did Mr. Vantine know him?"

      "No, sir; he wanted to know what he wanted."

      "What did he want?"

      "I don't know, sir; he couldn't speak English hardly at all—he was

       French, I think."

      Goldberger looked down at the body again and nodded.

      "Go ahead," he said.

      "And he was so excited," Parks added, "that he couldn't remember what little English he did know."

      "What made you think he was excited?"

      "The way he stuttered, and the way his eyes glinted. That's what makes me think he just come in here to kill hisself quiet like—I shouldn't be surprised if you found that he'd escaped from somewhere. I had a notion to put him out without bothering Mr. Vantine—I wish now I had—but I took his card up, and Mr. Vantine said for him to wait; so I come downstairs again, and showed the man in here, and said Mr. Vantine would see him presently, and then Rogers and me went back to our lunch and we sat there eating till the bell rang, and I came in and found Mr. Vantine here."

      "Do you mean to say that you and Rogers went away and left this stranger here by himself?"

      "The servants' dining-room is right at the end of the hall, sir. We left the door open so that we could see right along the hall, clear to the front door. If he'd come out into the hall, we'd have seen him."

      "And he didn't come out into the hall while you were there?"

      "No, sir."

      "Did anybody come in?"

      "Oh, no, sir; the front door has a snap-lock. It can't be opened from the outside without a key."

      "So you are perfectly sure that no one either entered or left the house by the front door while you and Rogers were sitting there?"

      "Nor by the back door either, sir; to get out the back way, you have to pass through the room where we were."

      "Where were the other servants?"

      "The cook was in the kitchen, sir. This is the housemaid's afternoon out."

      The coroner paused. Godfrey and Simmonds had both listened to this interrogation, but neither had been idle. They had walked softly about the room, had looked through a door opening into another room beyond, had examined the fastenings of the windows, and had ended by looking minutely over the carpet.

      "What is the room yonder used for?" asked Godfrey, pointing to the connecting door.

      "It's a sort of store-room just now, sir," said Parks. "Mr. Vantine is just back from Europe, and we've been unpacking in there some of the things he bought while abroad."

      "I guess that's all," said Goldberger, after a moment. "Send in Mr.

       Vantine, please."

      Parks went out, and Vantine came in a moment later. He corroborated exactly the story told by Parks and myself, but he added one detail.

      "Here is the man's card," he said, and held out a square of pasteboard.

      Goldberger took the card, glanced at it, and passed it on to

       Simmonds.

      "That don't tell us much," said the latter, and gave the card to Godfrey. I looked over his shoulder and saw that it contained a single engraved line:

      M. THÉOPHILE D'AURELLE

      "Except that he's French, as Parks suggested," said Godfrey. "That's evident, too, from the cut of his clothes."

      "Yes, and from the cut of his hair," added Goldberger. "You say you didn't know him, Mr. Vantine?"

      "I never before saw him, to my knowledge," answered Vantine. "The name is wholly unknown to me."

      "Well," said Goldberger, taking possession of the card again and slipping it into his pocket, "suppose we lift him onto that couch by the window and take a look through his clothes."

      The man was slightly built, so that Simmonds and Goldberger raised the body between them without difficulty and placed it on the couch. I saw Godfrey's eyes searching the carpet.

      "What I should like to know," he said, after a moment, "is this: if this fellow took poison, what did he take it out of? Where's the paper, or bottle, or whatever it was?"

      "Maybe it's in his hand," suggested Simmonds, and lifted the right hand, which hung trailing over the side of the couch.

      Then, as he raised it into the light, a sharp cry burst from him.

      "Look here," he said, and held the hand so that we all could see.

      It was swollen and darkly discoloured.

      "See there," said Simmonds, "something bit him," and he pointed to two deep incisions on the back of the hand, just above the knuckles, from which a few drops of blood had oozed and dried.

      With a little exclamation of surprise and excitement, Godfrey bent for an instant above the injured hand. Then he turned and looked at us.

      "This man didn't take poison," he said, in a low voice. "He was killed!"

CHAPTER III

       Table of Contents

      THE WOUNDED HAND

      "He was killed!" repeated Godfrey, with conviction; and, at the words, we drew together a little, with a shiver of repulsion. Death is awesome enough at any time; suicide adds to its horror; murder gives it the final touch.

      So we all stood silent, staring as though fascinated at the hand which Simmonds held up to us; at those tiny wounds, encircled by discoloured flesh and with a sinister dash of clotted blood running away from them. Then Goldberger, taking a deep breath, voiced the thought which had sprung into my own brain.

      "Why, it looks like a snake-bite!" he said, his voice sharp with astonishment.

      And, indeed, it did. Those two tiny incisions, scarcely half an inch apart, might well have been made by a serpent's fangs.

      The quick glance which all of us cast about the room was, of course, as involuntary as the chill which ran up our spines; yet Godfrey and I—yes, and Simmonds—had the excuse that, once upon a time, we had had an encounter with a deadly snake which none of us was