“So I photographed the wound and the bruise. Well, when I saw Weston, I saw she had really been drugged. Contracted pupils, bluish pallor. Morphia. Same symptoms in Ford. Why should they drug themselves and not drug Birdie? That ruled them out. Also, I surprised Flora in Birdie’s bedroom doing something by the bed. When I browsed round afterwards I found a wet bloodstain under a clean rug. When Flora knew the Weston girl was arrested and the jewels had been missed, she chucked the ring into Weston’s room. While you were searching the house, I drifted into Miss Flora’s room. Several medicine bottles about. One of ’em empty. That had carried a strong solution of morphia. So I set my chauffeur to watch for Flora. And that night she went off to the lodgings of Nastitch. She’s been buzzing round ever since. Well?”
“Well, sir, it’s a good thing you didn’t take to crime,” said Superintendent Bell.
“Oh, that’s much harder,” said Reggie.
CASE III
THE NICE GIRL
SOME are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. That was Dr. Reginald Fortune’s trouble. He had become a specialist, and, as he told anybody who would listen, thought it an absurd thing to be. For he was interested in everything, but not in anything in particular. And it was just this various versatility of mind and taste which had condemned him to be a specialist. Obviously an absurd world.
The Criminal Investigation Department, solicitors, and others dealing with those experiments in social reform which are called crimes, by continually appealing to his multifarious knowledge and his all-observant eye, turned Dr. Reginald Fortune, general practitioner at Westhampton, into Mr. Fortune of Wimpole Street, specialist in—what shall we say?—the surgery of crime. And Reggie Fortune, though richer for the change, was not grateful. He liked ordinary things, and any day would have gladly bartered a murder for a case of chicken-pox. This accounts for his unequalled sanity of judgement.
Reggie was in that one of his clubs which he liked best, because no member of it knew anything about his profession. He had just completed an animated discussion on the prehistoric art of the French Congo, and was going out, when the tape machine buzzed and clicked at his elbow, and he stopped to look.
“Murder of Sir Albert Lunt,” said the tape and, “Oh, my aunt!” said Reggie. The tape continued the conversation—thus: “Sir Albert Lunt, the well-known mining magnate, was found dead this afternoon in the deer park of his estate at Prior’s Colney, Bucks. The body was discovered by an employee, in circumstances which suggested foul play. A medical examination led to the conclusion that the deceased had been shot. The local police have the case in hand, and search is being actively prosecuted for——” Words failed the tape, and it relapsed into a buzz.