‘Hello, Dart,’ the physician responded to his greeting. ‘I’m glad you’re on this one. It’ll take a little active cerebration.’
‘Come on down, doc,’ the little detective grinned with a flash of white teeth. ‘You’re talking to a cop now, not a college professor. What’ve you got?’
‘A man that’ll tell no tales.’ The physician motioned to the undertaker’s front room. ‘He’s in there.’
Dart turned to his men. ‘Day, you cover the front of the place. Green, take the roof and cover the back yard. Johnson, search the house and get everybody you find into one room. Leave a light everywhere you go if possible—I’ll want to check up. Brady, you stay with me.’ Then he turned back and followed the doctor into the undertaker’s parlour. They stepped over to the sofa, which was in a shallow alcove formed by the front bay windows of the room.
‘How’d he get it, doc?’ he asked.
‘To tell you the truth, I haven’t the slightest idea.’
‘Somebody crowned him,’ Bubber helpfully volunteered.
‘Has anybody ast you anything?’ Jinx inquired gruffly.
Dart bent over the victim.
The physician said:
‘There is a scalp wound all right. See it?’
‘Yea—now that you mentioned it.’
‘But that didn’t kill him.’
‘No? How do you know it didn’t, doc?’
‘That wound is too slight. It’s not in a spot that would upset any vital centre. And there isn’t any fracture under it.’
‘Couldn’t a man be killed by a blow on the head that didn’t fracture his skull?’
‘Well—yes. If it fell just so that its force was concentrated on certain parts of the brain. I’ve never heard of such a case, but it’s conceivable. But this blow didn’t land in the right place for that. A blow at this point would cause death only by producing intracranial haemorrhage—’
‘Couldn’t you manage to say it in English, doc?’
‘Sure. He’d have to bleed inside his head.’
‘That’s more like it.’
‘The resulting accumulation of blood would raise the intra—the pressure inside his head to such a point that vital centres would be paralysed. The power would be shut down. His heart and lungs would quit cold. See? Just like turning off a light.’
‘O.K. if you say so. But how do you know he didn’t bleed inside his head?’
‘Well, there aren’t but two things that would cause him to.’
‘I’m learning, doc. Go on.’
‘Brittle arteries with no give in them—no elasticity. If he had them, he wouldn’t even have to be hit—just excitement might shoot up the blood pressure and pop an artery. See what I mean?’
‘That’s apoplexy, isn’t it?’
‘Right. And the other thing would be a blow heavy enough to fracture the skull and so rupture the blood vessels beneath. Now this man is about your age or mine—somewhere in his middle thirties. His arteries are soft—feel his wrists. For a blow to kill this man outright, it would have had to fracture his skull.’
‘Hot damn!’ whispered Bubber admiringly. ‘Listen to the doc do his stuff!’
‘And his skull isn’t fractured?’ said Dart.
‘Not if probing means anything.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve X-rayed him too?’ grinned the detective.
‘Any fracture that would kill this man outright wouldn’t have to be X-rayed.’
‘Then you’re sure the blow didn’t kill him?’
‘Not by itself, it didn’t.’
‘Do you mean that maybe he was killed first and hit afterwards?’
‘Why would anybody do that?’ Dr Archer asked.
‘To make it seem like violence when it was really something else.’
‘I see. But no. If this man had been dead when the blow was struck, he wouldn’t have bled at all. Circulation would already have stopped.’
‘That’s right.’
‘But of one thing I’m sure: that wound is evidence of too slight a blow to kill.’
‘Specially,’ interpolated Bubber, ‘a hard-headed cullud man—’
‘There you go ag’in,’ growled his lanky companion.
‘He’s right,’ the doctor said. ‘It takes a pretty hefty impact to bash in a skull. With a padded weapon,’ he went on, ‘a fatal blow would have had to be crushing to make even so slight a scalp wound as this. That’s out. And a hard, unpadded weapon that would break the scalp just slightly like this, with only a little bleeding and without even cracking the skull, could at most have delivered only a stunning blow, not a fatal one. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Sure. You mean this man was just stunned by the blow and actually died from something else.’
‘That’s the way it looks to me.’
‘Well—anyhow he’s dead and the circumstances indicate at least a possibility of death by violence. That justifies notifying us, all right. And it makes it a case for the medical examiner. But we really don’t know that he’s been killed, do we?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘All the more a case for the medical examiner, then. Is there a phone here, doc? Good. Brady, go back there and call the precinct. Tell ’em to get the medical examiner here double time and to send me four more men—doesn’t matter who. Now tell me, doc. What time did this man go out of the picture?’
The physician smiled.
‘Call Meridian 7-1212.’
‘O.K., doc. But approximately?’
‘Well, he was certainly alive an hour ago. Perhaps even half an hour ago. Hardly less.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘About fifteen minutes.’
‘Then he must have been killed—if he was killed—say anywhere from five to thirty-five minutes before you got here?’
‘Yes.’
Bubber, the insuppressible, commented to Jinx, ‘Damn! That’s trimming it down to a gnat’s heel, ain’t it?’ But Jinx only responded, ‘Fool, will you hush?’
‘Who discovered him—do you know?’
‘These two men.’
‘Both of you?’ Dart asked the pair.
‘No, suh,’ Bubber answered. ‘Jinx here discovered the man. I discovered the doctor.’
Dart started to question them further, but just then Johnson, the officer who had been directed to search the house, reappeared.
‘Been all over,’ he reported. ‘Only two people in the place. Women—both scared green.’
‘All right,’ the detective said. ‘Take these two men up to the same room. I’ll be up presently.’
Officer Brady returned. ‘Medical examiner’s comin’ right up.’
The