“You are perfectly right, Cassilis. That is the very point I was considering before you spoke. In my opinion there is very little likelihood of Charles tracing that woman. I think you and I must try our hand.”
I need scarcely say how delighted I was at this prospect. At last I should be able to devote myself to serving my chief without any dread of the result.
“Will it be possible to trace the leopard skin?” I asked. “There are not many taxidermists in London, are there? I have only heard of one. We might go round to them, and find out if any skins have passed through their hands recently. What strikes me is that all the skins I have seen have been mounted as rugs. I shouldn’t think that unmounted skins could be very common—skins that could be made part of a costume.”
My chief had punctuated these suggestions with a series of approving nods. At the close he spoke.
“Very good indeed, Cassilis. You have the makings of a detective, I can see. And now let me explain to you where I see a chance of success. You may put the taxidermists on one side. Leopard skins are such perishable things, and the climates in which leopards are killed are so treacherous, that the skins have to be roughly cured on the spot if they are to be preserved. And they are too common to be the object of much care afterwards as a rule. The chances are against any particular skin having passed through the hands of a taxidermist in London unless it was to be mounted as a rug.”
I felt very small as I listened to this reduction of my ideas to nothing. The specialist had not done.
“I don’t think it would be at all hopeful to try to trace the skin, therefore. But I think it quite possible to trace something else. Do you remember what else about the costume the man Gerard described?”
“Do you mean the necklace—of leopard’s claws?” I responded in doubt.
“Yes. I see you don’t grasp the significance of the claws. I must tell you that the natives of the countries where leopards are found look upon the claws as having a magical virtue. They place a great value on them, and take them from the dead leopard at the first opportunity they find. It is almost impossible for the white man who shoots a leopard to secure the claws. I doubt if more than one entire set of claws comes to England in a year. Now you see that in my opinion we have a very much greater chance of tracing the claws than the skin.”
I was fairly puzzled. I could follow Tarleton’s reasoning, of course, but I could not imagine how he meant to proceed.