“Otherwise than by the face? Remember the face has been disfigured. I might say, indeed, it is nonexistent, it has been so savagely battered.”
“By Heaven! I hope you will get the man who did it!” Pyke said, hotly. “But that does not answer your question.” He hesitated. “If it is not possible to recognise the features, I’m not so sure. How do you suggest it might be done?”
French shrugged.
“Identification otherwise than by the features is usually possible. It is a matter of observation. Some small physical defect, a crooked finger, the scar of an old cut, or mole on the neck—there are scores of indications to the observant man.”
Mr. Pyke sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Then I’m afraid I’m not very observant,” he said at last. “I can’t remember any such peculiarity in poor Stanley’s case.”
“Nothing in the shape of the finger nails,” French prompted. “No birthmark, no local roughness or discoloration of the skin?”
“By Jove!” Mr. Pyke exclaimed with a sudden gesture. “There is something. My cousin had a birthmark, a small red mark on his left arm, here. I remembered it directly you mentioned the word.”
“Then you have been fairly intimate with your cousin? Have you often seen this mark?”
“Seen it? Scores of times. We were boys together and I have noticed it again and again. Why, now I come to think of it, I saw it on these last holidays I spent with Stanley. We went to the south of France and shared a cabin in the steamer to Marseilles.”