In the courtyard there only remained living animals which had not yet undergone any treatment. I did not discover the others till later on, so here there was nothing destroyed. The operating rooms, on the other hand, disclosed an indescribable chaos of broken bottles, the mingled contents of which flooded the tiles with a pool of chemicals. A jumble of books, notes and notebooks, was spread over the holocaust of twisted implements.
Lastly, most of the surgical instruments had been stolen. The villains had fled with the secret of the Circeean operation, and the implements needed for performing it. The building where they had lived, indeed, with its chests and cupboards emptied, its furniture upside-down, proved the flight of the three associates.
CHAPTER XV
THE NEW BEAST
Under the influence of an indifference most praiseworthy, in these unfortunate circumstances, the official doctor asked no questions, examined nothing. I told him how my late uncle had died of syncope. He had heard about his heart-disease, and this official doctor gave me the Burial Certificate.
“Dr. Lerne is dead,” said he, “and our mission to-day will stop at that, if you please. For the rest, it is not our business to set investigations on foot which might bring us to contradict so eminent a master, and make him die otherwise than he desired.”
The funeral took place at Grey-l’Abbaye, without any pomp or spectators, after which I employed ten days in unraveling the affairs of this inconceivable duality; this unparalleled amalgam of assassin and victim: Klotz-Lerne.
During the course of his “phenomenal” existence, that is to say the last four and a half years or so, he had made no testamentary dispositions. This was to me the proof that in spite of his forebodings of his end, death had overtaken him unexpectedly, for no doubt had it been otherwise, he would have done everything to disinherit me.
I found in his desk, at the bottom of the secret drawer, my uncle’s Will, as the letter of long ago had told me I should. It appointed me his residuary legatee.