“There’s another strange thing I wish to ask your opinion about,” pursued Kennedy, not to be rebuffed. “I have seen his body. It is in an excellent state of preservation, almost lifelike. And yet I understand, or at least it seems, that it was not embalmed.”
“You’ll have to ask the undertaker about that,” answered the doctor brusquely.
It was evident that he was getting more and more constrained in his answers. Kennedy did not seem to mind it, but to me it seemed that he must be hiding something. Was there some secret which medical ethics kept locked in his breast? Kennedy had risen and excused himself.
The interviews had not resulted in much, I felt, yet Kennedy did not seem to care. Back in the city again, he buried himself in his laboratory for the rest of the day, most of the time in his dark room, where he was developing photographic plates or films, I did not know which.
During the afternoon Andrews dropped in for a few moments to report that he had nothing to add to what had already developed. He was not much impressed by the interviews.
“There’s just one thing I want to speak about, though,” he said at length, unburdening his mind. “That tomb and the swamp, too, ought to be watched. Last night showed me that there seems to be a regular nocturnal visitor and that we cannot depend on that town night watchman to scare him off. Yet if we watch up there, he will be warned and will lie low. How can we watch both places at once and yet remain hidden?”
Kennedy nodded approval of the suggestion. “I’ll fix that,” he replied, anxious to return to his photographic labours. “Meet me, both of you, on the road from the station at Woodbine, just as it is getting dusk.” Without another word he disappeared into the dark room.
We met him that night as he had requested. He had come up to Woodbine in the baggage-car of the train with a powerful dog, for all the world like a huge, grey wolf.
“Down, Schaef,” he ordered, as the dog began to show an uncanny interest in me. “Let me introduce my new dog-detective,” he chuckled. “She has a wonderful record as a police-dog.”
We were making our way now through the thickening shadows of the town to the outskirts. “She’s a German sheep-dog, a Schaferhund,” he explained. “For my part, it is the English bloodhound in the open country and the sheep-dog in the city and the suburbs.”