“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Damaged muscle and perhaps nerve. It is all numb at present, but it doesn’t seem to be bleeding much. I think I could hobble if you would help me up.”
He shook his head and beckoned to a couple of constables, with whose aid he carried me into the studio and deposited me on the sofa. Immediately afterwards the two wounded officers were brought in, and I was relieved to hear that neither of them was dangerously hurt, though the Sergeant had a fractured arm and Barber a flesh wound of the chest and a cracked rib. The ladies having been politely ejected into the garden, Thorndyke examined the various injuries and applied temporary dressings, producing the materials from a very business-like-looking bag which he had providently brought with him. While he was thus engaged three constables entered carrying the corpse, which, with a few words of apology, they deposited on the floor by the side of the sofa.
I looked down at the ill-omened figure with lively curiosity, and especially was I impressed and puzzled by the very singular appearance of the face. Its general colour was of that waxen pallor characteristic of the faces of the dead, particularly of those who have died from hemorrhage. But the nose and the acne patches remained unchanged. Indeed, their colour seemed intensified, for their vivid red “stared” from the surrounding white like the painted patches on a clown’s face.
The mystery was solved when, the surgical business being concluded, Barber came and seated himself on the edge of the sofa.
“Masterly make-up, that,” said he, nodding at the corpse. “Looks queer enough now, but when he was alive you couldn’t spot it even in daylight.”
“Make-up!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know you could make-up off the stage.”
“You can’t wear a celluloid nose off the stage, or a tie-on beard,” he replied. “But when it is done as well as this—a touch or two of nose-paste or toupée-paste, tinted carefully with grease-paint and finished up with powder—it’s hard to spot. These experts in make-up are a holy terror to the police.”
“Did you know that he was made-up?” I asked, looking at Thorndyke.
“I inferred that he was,” the latter replied, “and so did Sergeant Barber. But now we had better see what his natural appearance is.”
He stooped over the corpse, and with a small ivory paper-knife scraped from the end of the nose and the parts adjacent a layer of coloured plastic material about the consistency of modelling-wax. Then with vaseline and cotton-wool he cleaned away the red pigment until the pallid skin showed unsullied.