“I think he has simplified the case,” remarked Craig, leaning back, his hands behind his head, gazing up at the ceiling. “Hello, here’s Leslie! What did you find, Doctor?” The coroner had entered with a look of awe on his face, as if Kennedy had directed him by some sort of necromancy.
“It was Señora Herreria!” he exclaimed. “She has been missing from the hotel ever since late yesterday afternoon. What do you think of it?”
“I think,” replied Kennedy, speaking slowly and deliberately, “that it is very much like the Northrop case. You haven’t taken that up yet?”
“Only superficially. What do you make of it?” asked the coroner.
“I had an idea that it might be aconitin poisoning,” he said.
Leslie glanced at him keenly for a moment. “Then you’ll never prove anything in the laboratory,” he said.
“There are more ways of catching a criminal, Leslie,” put in Craig, “than are set down in the medico-legal text-books. I shall depend on you and Jameson to gather together a rather cosmopolitan crowd here to-night.”
He said it with a quiet confidence which I could not gainsay, although I did not understand. However, mostly with the official aid of Doctor Leslie, I followed out his instructions, and it was indeed a strange party that assembled that night. There were Doctor Bernardo; Sato, the curio dealer; Otaka, the Ainu, and ourselves. Mrs. Northrop, of course, could not come.
“Mexico,” began Craig, after he had said a few words explaining why he had brought us together, “is full of historical treasure. To all intents and purposes, the government says, ‘Come and dig.’ But when there are finds, then the government swoops down on them for its own national museum. The finder scarcely gets a chance to export them. However, now seemed to be the time to Professor Northrop to smuggle his finds out of the country.
“But evidently it could not be done without exciting all kinds of rumors and suspicions. Stories seem to have spread far and fast about what he had discovered. He realized the unsettled condition of the country—perhaps wanted to confirm his reading of a certain inscription by consultation with one scholar whom he thought he could trust. At any rate, he came home.”