The report of the physician who had attended Standish, the acrobat, was perfunctory, but it mentioned
that "after patient had apparently died, singularly disagreeable sounds emanated from his throat." I
wondered whether these had been the same demonic machinations that had come from Peters, and, if so,
I could not wonder at all at my correspondent's reticence concerning them.
I knew the physician who had attended the banker-opinionated, pompous, a perfect doctor of the very
rich.
"There can be no mystery as to the cause of death," he wrote. "It was certainly thrombosis, a clot
somewhere in the brain. I attach no importance whatever to the facial grimaces, nor to the time element
involved in the rigor. You know, my dear Lowell," he added, patronizingly, "it is an axiom in forensic
medicine that one can prove anything by rigor mortis."