"Aren't you going to open it?" I demanded excitedly—"aren't you going to open it?"
"Might I invite you to accompany me into the bedroom yonder for a moment?" he replied in a tome of studied reserve. "You also, Weymouth?"
Smith leading, we entered the room where the dead man lay stretched upon the bed.
"Note the appearance of his fingers," directed Nayland Smith.
I examined the peculiarity to which Smith had drawn my attention. The dead man's fingers were swollen extraordinarily, the index finger of either hand especially being oddly discolored, as though bruised from the nail upward. I looked again at the ghastly face, then, repressing a shudder, for the sight was one not good to look upon, I turned to Smith, who was watching me expectantly with his keen, steely eyes.
From his pocket the took out a knife containing a number of implements, amongst them a hook-like contrivance.
"Have you a button-hook, Petrie," he asked, "or anything of that nature?"
"How will this do?" said the Inspector, and he produced a pair of handcuffs. "They were not wanted," he added significantly.
"Better still," declared Smith.
Reclosing his knife, he took the handcuffs from Weymouth, and, returning to the sitting-room, opened them widely and inserted two steel points in the hollows of the golden pomegranates. He pulled. There was a faint sound of moving mechanism and the wooden lid lifted, revealing the interior of the coffer. It contained three long bars of lead—and nothing else!