"No;" the reporter's voice sank to a whisper; "murder!"
"Murder?" repeated the artist, startled. "But how do you know that?"
"This lump of lead tells the story," said Sturgis, holding up the shapeless piece of metal which he had taken out of the vat.
"What is it? A bullet?"
"Yes; the bullet which Chatham carried in his arm from the time that he was wounded by Arbogast, the bullet which has enabled me to trace him step by step, from his flight from the overturned cab, to Doctor Thurston's, and finally to his death in this very room; the bullet whose peculiar shape is recorded in this shadow picture taken by Thurston by means of the Roentgen rays."
So saying, he handed Sprague the photograph. But the artist had ceased to listen.
"In this very room?" he mused aloud, looking about him with awe.
"Yes. The story is simple enough. The man whose instrument Chatham was, is not one who would care to be lumbered up with tools, which become positively dangerous as soon as they cease to be useful. This man, totally unhampered by pity, gratitude or fear, determined to destroy the accountant, whose discovery might have imperilled his own welfare. What mattered a human life or two, when weighed against the possible loss of his own life or liberty, or of his high social standing and his enormous wealth; for this man is both renowned and rich, and he appears to have brought wholesale murder to a science."
"Do you mean to say that wholesale murder can be indulged in with impunity in a city like New York, at the end of the nineteenth century?" asked Sprague aghast.
"Yes; when it is done in the systematic and scientific manner that has been employed here. For this murderer is the most remarkable criminal of modern times. He has not been satisfied with killing his victims; he has succeeded in completely wiping them out of existence. Criminals have often attempted to destroy the bodies of their victims, but they have never before succeeded as this man has. He is a chemist of remarkable talent, and he has discovered a compound in which bone as well as human tissue is rapidly and totally dissolved. There it is in yonder tank. See how completely the liquid has destroyed the bone handle of this knife."