“Been photographed?”
“Not as yet. Of course it will be—as were the other four—prior to the time of burial should nobody turn up to claim it. But in this instance we have great hopes that identification will take place on the strength of a marked peculiarity. The man is web-footed and——”
“The man is what?” rapped in Cleek excitedly.
“Web-footed,” repeated Narkom. “The several toes are attached one to the other by a thin membrane, after the manner of a duck’s feet; and on the left foot there is a peculiar horny protuberance like——”
“Like a rudimentary sixth toe!” interrupted Cleek, fairly flinging the eager query at him. “It is, eh? Well, by the Eternal! I once knew a fellow—years ago, in the Far East—whose feet were malformed like that; and if by any possibility——Stop a bit! A word more. Is that man a big fellow—broad shouldered, muscular, and about forty or forty-five years of age?”
“You’ve described him to a T, dear chap. There is, however, a certain other peculiarity which you have not mentioned, though that, of course, maybe a recent acquirement. The palm of the right hand——”
“Wait a bit! Wait a bit!” interposed Cleek, a trifle irritably. He had swung away from the window and was now walking up and down the room with short nervous steps, his chin pinched up between his thumb and forefinger, his brows knotted, and his eyes fixed upon the floor.
“Saffragam—Jaffna—Trincomalee! In all three of them—in all three!” he said, putting his running thoughts into muttered words. “And now a dead man sticks his fingers in his nostrils and talks of sapphires. Sapphires, eh? And the Saffragam district stuck thick with them as spangles on a Nautch girl’s veil. The Bareva for a ducat! The Bareva Reef or I’m a Dutchman! And Barrington-Edwards was in that with the rest. So was Peabody; so was Miles; and so, too, were Lieutenant Edgburn and the Spaniard, Juan Alvarez. Eight of them, b’gad—eight! And I was ass enough to forget, idiot enough not to catch the connection until I heard again of Jim Peabody’s web foot! But wait! Stop—there should be another marked foot if this is indeed a clue to the riddle, and so——”
He stopped short in his restless pacing and faced round on Mr. Narkom.
“Tell me something,” he said in a sharp staccato. “The four other dead men—did any among them have an injured foot—the left or the right, I forget which—from which all toes but the big one had been torn off by a crocodile’s bite, so that in life the fellow must have limped a little when he walked? Did any of the dead men bear a mark like that?”