“Quite so,” replied Thorndyke; “that is the question, and a very difficult question it is. A glance at that interior would doubtless clear up the whole mystery. But how are we to get that glance? We cannot enter houses speculatively to see if they present traces of a murder. At present, our clue breaks off abruptly. The other end of it is in some unknown house, and, if we cannot join up the two ends, our problem remains unsolved. For the question is, you remember, Who killed Oscar Brodski?”
“Then what do you propose to do?” I asked.
“The next stage of the inquiry is to connect some particular house with this crime. To that end, I can only gather up all available facts and consider each in all its possible bearings. If I cannot establish any such connection, then the inquiry will have failed and we shall have to make a fresh start—say, at Amsterdam, if it turns out that Brodski really had diamonds on his person, as I have no doubt he had.” Here our conversation was interrupted by our arrival at the spot where the body had been found. The station-master had halted, and he and the inspector were now examining the near rail by the light of their lanterns.
“There’s remarkably little blood about,” said the former. “I’ve seen a good many accidents of this kind and there has always been a lot of blood, both on the engine and on the road. It’s very curious.”
Thorndyke glanced at the rail with but slight attention: that question had ceased to interest him. But the light of his lantern flashed onto the ground at the side of the track—a loose, gravelly soil mixed with fragments of chalk—and from thence to the soles of the inspector’s boots, which were displayed as he knelt by the rail.
“You observe, Jervis?” he said in a low voice, and I nodded. The inspector’s boot-soles were covered with adherent particles of gravel and conspicuously marked by the chalk on which he had trodden.
“You haven’t found the hat, I suppose?” Thorndyke asked, stooping to pick up a short piece of string that lay on the ground at the side of the track.
“No,” replied the inspector, “but it can’t be far off. You seem to have found another clue, sir,” he added, with a grin, glancing at the piece of string.
“Who knows,” said Thorndyke. “A short end of white twine with a green strand in it. It may tell us something later. At any rate we’ll keep it,” and, taking from his pocket a small tin box containing, among other things, a number of seed envelopes, he slipped the string into one of the latter and scribbled a note in pencil on the outside. The inspector watched his proceedings with an indulgent smile, and then returned to his examination of the track, in which Thorndyke now joined.
“I suppose the poor chap was near-sighted,” the officer remarked, indicating the remains of the shattered spectacles; “that might account for his having strayed onto the line.”