“And these were the only marks?” Anthony said.
“Enough, aren’t they, sir?”
“Yes,” murmured Anthony. “Oh, yes. What lovely little marks! How kind of Archibald!”
“What’s that, sir?”
“I was remarking, Boyd, on the kindly forethought which Mr. Deacon showed for Scotland Yard. He couldn’t bear to think of you wasting your time detecting all the wrong people, so he left his card for you.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at at all, sir.” Boyd shook his head sadly.
Anthony handed back the photographs and started the car. In less than a minute they had finished the descent and turned the corner into the village of Marling. Boyd caught his breath and clung to his seat. The High Street streamed by them. At its far end Anthony pulled up, outside the little police station. Marling was proud of its police station, an offensive affair of pinkish brick. To Anthony, coming upon it in the midst of the little leaning houses, the low-browed shops and thatched cottages, it was like finding a comic postcard of the Mother-in-law school in an exhibition of pleasing miniatures.
He shivered, and dragged Boyd inside. Here he was received by the local inspector. At a word from Boyd the inspector produced keys, opened locks and at last laid on the table the wood-rasp.
It was, as Sir Arthur had said, the biggest of its kind—a foot-long bar of serrated iron, looking like a file whose roughnesses have been ten times magnified. To the points of these roughnesses clung little scraps of stained and withered flesh, while in the corresponding hollows were dark encrustations of dried blood. The handle was new, of some light-coloured wood, and was perhaps four inches long and three and a half in circumference.
“Now that’s not at all pretty,” said Anthony, with a grimace. “Can I pick it up? Or would that spoil the marks?”