The floor was oak, polished, and dark in colour either by staining or time. The only carpet on it was a square in the centre. A clothes-press stood in a corner. It was the only place in which a man could be concealed. Brodie opened the door, and found nothing but clothes there. The mystery, therefore, was as far from solution as ever, apparently, as now there wasn’t a corner of the house that had not been examined thoroughly and exhaustively.
As Brodie was in the act of leaving the room, his eye was attracted by something glittering on the hearthstone, where the cold, white ashes of a wood-fire still remained. He stooped down and picked from the hearth a scrap, a mere morsel of cloth. It was all burnt round the edges, and was dusty with the ash; but he found on examination that it was a fragment of Indian cloth, into which gold threads had been worked; and it was these gold threads which, in spite of the dust, had reflected the light and attracted his notice.
Taking out his pocket-book, he deposited that scrap of charred cloth carefully between the leaves, then went down on his knees and subjected the ashes to critical examination, with the result that he obtained unmistakable evidence of a considerable amount of cloth having been destroyed by fire. There were patches here and there of white, or rather gray, carbonized, filmy fragments of cobweb-like texture. As everyone knows, cloth burnt in a fire leaves a ghost-like wrack behind, that, unless disturbed, will remain for some time.
Brodie rose and fell into deep thought, and he mentally asked himself why the cloth had been burnt. It was reasonable to presume it was some portion of clothing, and if so, why should anyone have been at the trouble to consume it in the flames unless it was to hide certain evidences of guilt.
‘What would those evidences of guilt be?’ Brodie muttered to himself, as he reflected on the singular discovery he had made. And suddenly it seemed to him—of course, it was purely fancy—that a voice whispered in his ear:
‘Blood! blood!’
Although but fancy, the voice seemed so real to him that he fairly started, and at that instant the door opened and Chunda entered. He seemed greatly surprised to find the detective in the room, and muttered something in Hindustani.
As Brodie did not understand him and could not converse with him, he made no response, but passed out, and, hurrying to Edinburgh, called on Professor Dunbar, the eminent microscopist, and asked that gentleman to place the fragment of cloth found on the hearthstone under a powerful microscope.
The Professor did as requested, and, after a careful examination, he said he could not detect anything suggestive of blood. The cloth was evidently of Indian workmanship, and the bright threads running through it were real gold.
Brodie did not return to Corbie Hall until the following day. By that time Maggie Stiven’s body had been removed by her friends for burial, and he was informed by the servants that Chunda had gone out to attend the funeral. He was rather surprised at that, and still more surprised when he found, on going to Chunda’s room, that the door was locked.