“A bullet wound unquestionably.”
Inspector Willis picked up an acetylene bicycle lamp which one of the men had procured and directed its beam into the cab.
The corpse lay in the back corner seat on the driver’s side, the head lolling back sideways against the cushions and crushing into a shapeless mass the gray Homburg hat. The mouth and eyes were open and the features twisted as if from sudden pain. The face was long and oval, the hair and eyes dark, and there was a tiny black mustache with waxed ends. A khaki colored waterproof, open in front, revealed a gray tweed suit, across the waistcoat of which shone a gold watch chain. Tan shoes covered the feet. On the left side of the body just over the heart was a little round hole in the waterproof coat Willis stooped and smelled the cloth.
“No blackening and no smell of burned powder,” he thought. “He must have been shot from outside the cab.” But he found it hard to understand how such a shot could have been fired from the populous streets of London. The hole also seemed too far round towards the back of the body to suggest that the bullet had come in through the open window. The point was puzzling, but Willis pulled himself up sharply with the reminder that he must not begin theorizing until he had learned all the facts.
Having gazed at the gruesome sight until he had impressed its every detail on his memory, he turned to his assistant. “Get ahead with your flashlight, Kirby,” he ordered. “Take views from all the angles you can. The constable will give you a hand. Meantime, sergeant, give me an idea of the case. What does the driver say?”
“He’s here, sir,” the officer returned, pointing to a small, slight individual in a leather coat and cap, with a sallow, frightened face and pathetic, dog-like eyes which fixed themselves questioningly on Willis’s face as the sergeant led their owner forward.
“You might tell me what you know, driver.”
The man shifted nervously from one foot to the other.
“It was this way, sir,” he began. He spoke earnestly, and to Willis, who was accustomed to sizing up rapidly those with whom he dealt, he seemed a sincere and honest man. “I was driving down Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner looking out for a fare, and when I gets just by the end of Bond Street two men hails me. One was this here man what’s dead, the other was a big, tall gent. I pulls in to the curb, and they gets in, and the tall gent he says ‘King’s Cross.’ I starts off by Piccadilly Circus and Shaftesbury Avenue, but when I gets into Tottenham Court Road about the corner of Great Russell Street, one of them says through the tube, ‘Let me down here at the corner of Great Russell Street,’ he sez. I pulls over to the curb, and the tall gent he gets out and stands on the curb and speaks in to the other one. Then I shall follow by the three o’clock tomorrow,’ he sez, and he shuts the door and gives me a bob and sez, ‘That’s for yourself,’ he sez, ‘and my friend will square up at the station,’ he sez. I came on here, and when this here man opens the door,” he indicated a porter standing by, “why, the man’s dead. And that’s all I knows about it.”
The statement was made directly and convincingly, and Willis frowned as he thought that such apparently simple cases proved frequently to be the most baffling in the end. In his slow, careful way he went over in his mind what he had heard, and then began to try for further details.