"Is he all right—safe—not one of them gars—you know, the fellows that use a silk cord to strangle you with?" asked Thong, who had some imagination regarding garroters.
"Not at all like that," said Darcy, and there was the trace of a smile on his face. "He is a gentleman."
"Oh," said Carroll and Thong in unison.
There came another knock on the side door downstairs. There was less of a crowd about now, and Mulligan did not have to keep back a rush as he opened the portal.
"Dr. Warren," reported the policeman, calling upstairs to Carroll and
Thong.
"The county physician," explained Carroll. "Better come down and meet him, Mr. Darcy. He'll want to ask you some questions. Then we'll have another go at you. Got to ask a lot of questions in a case like this," he half apologized.
"Oh, sure," assented the jewelry worker.
"Doc Warren, eh," mused Thong to his partner, as Darcy preceded them downstairs. "Now we'll know what killed her, and we'll have something to start on—maybe."
"I think we've got something already," observed Carroll.
"Oh, yes—maybe—and then—again—maybe not. Come on!"
"Morning boys! Nice crisp day—if you say it quick!" cried the county physician, as he shook the rain from his coat and tossed his auto gloves on a shiny glass showcase. "Second time this week you've got me out of bed before my time. What's the matter, if they've got to have a murder, with doing it in the afternoon? I like my sleep!"
He was smiling and cheerful, was Dr. Warren. Murders and autopsies were all in the day's work with him. He had been county physician for a number of years.
"Hum, yes! quite an old lady," he mused as he took off his coat, which Carroll held for him. The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves and stooped down. "Head's badly cut—let's see what we have here. Let's have a light, it's too dark to see."
One of the clerks switched on more electric lights, and they glinted and sparkled on the silver and cut glass. They flashed on the white, still face, and the gleams seemed to be swallowed up in that red blotch in the snowy hair.
"Um, yes! Depressed fracture. Bad place, too. Shouldn't wonder but what it had done the trick. Might have been from a black-jack?" and he glanced questioningly at the detectives.
Carroll shook his head in negation.
"That'll crack a skull, but it won't draw blood—not if it's used right," and he brought from his hip pocket one of the weapons in question—a short, stout flexible reed, covered with leather, the end forming a pocket in which was a chunk of lead.
"I'll gamble it wasn't one of them," said Carroll.
"Maybe not," assented the doctor. "Let's look a bit further."
He glanced at the floor about the body, peered around the edge of a showcase, underneath which there was a space for refuse—odds and ends, discarded wrapping paper and the like—a place into which neither of the detectives had, as yet, glanced. Dr. Warren uttered an exclamation, and drew out a metal statue, about two feet high.
It was that of a hunter, standing as though he had just delivered a shot, and was peering to see the effect. The butt of his gun projected behind him, and as Dr. Warren moved the statue into the light of the jewelry store chandeliers, they all saw, clinging to the stock of the gun, some straggling, white hairs.
"That's what did it!" exclaimed the county physician. "I'll wager, when I try, I can fit that gun butt into the depression of the fracture. The burglar—or whoever it was—swung this statue as a club. It would make a deadly one, using the foot end for a handle," and Dr. Warren waved the ornament in the air over the dead woman's head to illustrate what he meant.
"Don't!" muttered Darcy in a strained voice.
"Don't what?" asked the physician sharply.
"Use the statue that way."
"Why not?"
"Well—er—I—we were going to buy it for our new home. But now—Oh, I never want to see it in the house! I couldn't bear to look at it—nor could she!"
"She? We? What do you mean?" asked Carroll quickly. "Say, do you know something about this killing that you're keeping back from us?"
He took a step nearer Darcy—a threatening step it would seem, from the fact that the jewelry worker drew back as if in alarm.
"No, I don't know anything," said Darcy in a low voice.
"Then what's this talk about the statue—not wanting it in the house—whose house?"
"The house I hope to live in with my wife—Miss Amy Mason," answered Darcy, and he spoke in calm contrast to his former excitement, "We are going to be married in the fall," he went on. "I had asked Mrs. Darcy to set that statue aside for me. Miss Mason admired it, and I planned to buy it. We had the place all picked out where it would stand. But—now—"
He did not finish, but a shudder seemed to shake his frame.
"It would be a rather grewsome object to have around after it had killed the old lady," murmured the reporter. "But are you sure it did, Doc?"
"Pretty sure, yes. I never make a statement, though, until after the autopsy. No telling what that may develop. I'll get at it right away. I guess you remember that Murray case," he went on, to no one in particular. "There they all thought the man was murdered, when, as a matter of fact he had been taken with a heart spell, fell downstairs, and a knife he had in his hand pierced his heart."
"That wasn't your case, Doc," observed Carroll.
"No, it was before my time. But I remember it. That's why I'm saying nothing until I've made an examination. Better 'phone the morgue keeper," he went on, "and have them come for the body."
"Have you—have you got to take her away?" faltered Darcy.
"Yes. I'm sorry, but it wouldn't do—here," and the doctor motioned to the glittering array of cut glass and plate. "You won't keep the store open?" he inquired.
"No. I'll put a notice in the door now," and Darcy wrote out one which a clerk affixed to the front door for him.
"Well, that's all I can do now," Dr. Warren said, after his very perfunctory examination. "The rest will have to be at the morgue. Got a place where I can wash my hands?" he asked.
Darcy indicated a little closet near his work bench. Dr. Warren soon resumed his coat, accepted a cigarette from Daley, slipped into his still damp rain-garment and was soon throbbing down the street in his automobile, having announced that he was going to breakfast and would perform the autopsy immediately afterward.
Soon a black wagon rattled up to the jewelry store, bringing fresh acquisitions to the crowd, which persisted in staying in spite of the rain, which had now changed from a drizzle to a more pronounced downpour.
More reporters came, and Daley fraternized with them, the newspaper men aside from the police and Jim Holiday, a detective from Prosecutor Bardon's office, being the only people admitted to the shop, when the clerks had been sent home.
The morgue keeper's men lifted the fast stiffening body and were about to place it in the wicker carrier when Carroll, who was watching them rather idly, uttered an exclamation.
"What's up?" asked Thong quickly. He had been strolling about the shop, and had come to a stop near Darcy's work table—a sort of bench against the wall, and behind one of the showcases. The bench was fitted with a lathe, and on it were parts of watches, like the dead specimens preserved in alcohol in a doctor's office. "What's up, Bill?"
"Look!" exclaimed Carroll, pointing.
The men from the morgue had the body raised in the air. And then, in the gleam from the electric lights there was