At the time of his death Sir Horace Fewbanks was 58 years of age, but since death the grey bristles had grown so rapidly through his clean-shaven face that he looked much older. The face showed none of the wonted placidity of death. The mouth was twisted in an ugly fashion, as though the murdered man had endeavoured to cry for help and had been attacked and killed while doing so. One of Sir Horace's arms—the right one—was thrust forward diagonally across his breast as if in self-defence, and the hand was tightly clenched. Rolfe, who had last seen His Honour presiding on the Bench in the full pomp and majesty of law, felt a chill strike his heart at the fell power of death which did not even respect the person of a High Court judge, and had stripped him of every vestige of human dignity in the pangs of a violent end. The face he had last seen on the Bench full of wisdom and austerity of the law was now distorted into a livid mask in which it was hard to trace any semblance of the features of the dead judge.
Rolfe's official alertness of mind in the face of a mysterious crime soon reasserted itself, however, and he shook off the feeling of sentiment and proceeded to make a closer examination of the dead body. As he turned down the sheet to examine the wound which had ended the judge's life, it slipped from his hand and fell on the floor, revealing that the judge had been laid on the couch just as he had been killed, fully clothed. He had been shot through the body near the heart, and a large patch of blood had welled from the wound and congealed in his shirt. One trouser leg was ruffled up, and had caught in the top of the boot.
The corpse presented a repellent spectacle, but Rolfe, who had seen unpleasant sights of various kinds in his career, bent over the body with keen interest, noting these details, with all his professional instincts aroused. For though Rolfe had not yet risen very high in the police force, he had many of the qualities which make the good detective—observation, sagacity, and some imagination. The extraordinary crime which he had been called upon to help unravel presented a baffling mystery which was likely to test the value of these qualities to the utmost.
Rolfe looked steadily at the corpse for some time, impressing a picture of it in every detail on his mental retina. Struck by an idea, he bent over and touched the patch of blood in the dead man's breast, then looked at his finger. There was no stain. The blood was quite congealed. Then he tried to unclench the judge's right hand, but it was rigid.
As Rolfe stood there gazing intently at the corpse, and trying to form some theory of the reason for the murder, certain old stories he had heard of Sir Horace Fewbanks's private life and character recurred to him. These rumours had not been much—a jocular hint or two among his fellows at Scotland Yard that His Honour had a weakness for a pretty face and in private life led a less decorous existence than a judge ought to do. Rolfe wondered how much or how little truth was contained in these stories. He glanced around the vast room. Certainly it was not the sort of apartment in which a High Court judge might be expected to do his entertaining, but Rolfe recalled that he had heard gossip to the effect that Sir Horace, because of his virtual estrangement from his daughter, did very little entertaining beyond an occasional bridge or supper party to his sporting friends, and rarely went into Society.
Rolfe began to scrutinise the articles of furniture in the room, wondering if there was anything about them which might reveal something of the habits of the dead man. He produced a small electric torch from his pocket, and with its light to guide him in the half-darkened room, he closely inspected each piece of furniture. Then, with the torch in his hand, he returned to the sofa and flashed it over the dead body. He started violently when the light, falling on the dead man's closed hand, revealed a tiny scrap of white. Eagerly he endeavoured to release the fragment from the tenacious clutch of the dead without tearing it, and eventually he managed to detach it. His heart bounded when he saw that it was a small torn piece of lace and muslin. He placed it in the palm of his left hand and examined it closely under the light of his torch. To him it looked to be part of a fashionable lady's dainty handkerchief. He was elated at his discovery and he wondered how Inspector Chippenfield had overlooked it. Then the explanation struck him. The small piece of lace and muslin had been effectually hidden in the dead man's clenched hand, and his efforts to open the hand had loosened it.
"Well, Rolfe," said Inspector Chippenfield, when his subordinate reappeared, "you've been long enough to have unearthed the criminal or revived the corpse. Have you discovered anything fresh?"
"Only this," replied Rolfe, displaying the piece of handkerchief.
The find startled Inspector Chippenfield out of his air of bantering superiority.
"Where did you get that?" he stammered, as he reached out eagerly for it.