CHAPTER XIV
THE CASE OF THE MURDERED FINANCIER
The division of the thousand-pound reward made the three of us inclined for frivolity and pleasure. I happened to have little to do, so we made several excursions and visited many theaters. Relaxation is good, but one may have too much of it; certainly it was not the best training for the next case I was called upon to investigate.
I remember a man of many convictions once telling me that he rather enjoyed picking oakum, a proof that one may become used to anything. In the course of my career I have become accustomed to ghastly sights, yet when I entered that room in Hampstead a feeling of nausea seized me which had something of fear in it. Without attempting any close observation, I went out and sent a line to Christopher Quarles, asking him to come to me at once.
It was chiefly my desire for companionship in my investigations which made me do so, I think; still, it may be that subconsciously I realized that this was a case for the professor. The force of contrast, too, may have had something to do with my attitude. Two nights ago, the professor, Zena, and I had been to the opera, mainly to see a Hungarian dancer who had recently caused a sensation. She was a very beautiful woman, and her dancing, which was illustrative of abstract ideas, was impressive, if bizarre. Quarles had pointed out a man in a box who seemed literally absorbed in the performance, and said he was a wealthy German named Seligmann, who was financially interested in the opera season.
This morning Seligmann was dead, lying limply in a deep arm-chair in the study of his home in Hampstead. Owing to some misunderstanding I had arrived before the doctor who had been sent for, and, as I have said, the sight nauseated me. Downward, through his neck, a stiletto had been driven, a death-dealing blow delivered from behind, apparently, but besides this his face and throat were torn as though some great bird had attacked him with powerful talons. The description is inadequate, perhaps, but it was too terrible a sight to enlarge upon.
Quarles and the doctor arrived at the same time, and the three of us entered the room together. After looking at the dead man for a few moments, Quarles stood apart while the doctor made his examination, but I noticed that his eyes were particularly alive behind his round goggles.
The doctor was puzzled.
"The stiletto killed him," he said, slowly, looking at me, "but these other wounds—the sudden explosion of some vessel might have caused them, but there are no fragments. It almost looks as if the flesh had been torn by a rake. He has been dead some hours."
"Yesterday was Sunday," I replied, "and this room was not opened."
"That accounts for the time," he said. "The work of a madman, perhaps. Murder, undoubtedly."