“Yes.”
“Did you have the same doctor to all three of your relatives after their deaths had been discovered?” I asked Sir Eldred.
“Yes,” he said. “Dr. Bowles. He has attended us for years.”
“What age is he?” I inquired.
Sir Eldred thought a moment. “About sixty-four or five,” he replied. “He attended my father long before he was married.”
“Then he would be a little old-fashioned,” I said. “He might not, for instance, have much knowledge of the newest poisons. New poisons, you know, both in the form of liquid and gases, are constantly being discovered. Many are imported from Germany and the East. Might I see Dr. Bowles?”
“Certainly,” Sir Eldred replied; “but I fear he cannot help you much, as all he knew he made public at the inquests.”
Sir Eldred was right practically. In my interview with Dr. Bowles, I found that he could tell me little beyond what I already knew. “Can you,” I asked him, “describe the appearance of the bodies and the effect on them of the gas which you say, in all probability, caused the asphyxiation? Was there anything specially remarkable in the facial contractions or colour of the skin?”
“Yes,” he said, “there was an infinite horror, such horror as I have never seen in human faces before,” and he shuddered as he spoke. Then he gave me a minute description of the bodies, which I took down in my notebook and posted to a specialist in Oriental poisons whom I knew in London.
“Was there nothing else in the three cases that struck you as unusual?” I asked Dr. Bowles. “No peculiarity in common?”