“Dawson?” he repeated, “Dawson? I fancy I’ve heard that name in connexion with scientific discovery.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “If he’s a well-known man we shall soon find out all about him at the Royal Institution.”
I was standing near the fireplace with the envelope still in my hand when, of a sudden, I was startled by a strange scuttling noise near my feet.
“Good heavens!” gasped Patterson, his eyes riveted on the spot. “Look there! Look at that glass case! There are snakes in it!”
I sprang away, and looking in the direction he indicated saw that a glass case, standing on the ground, contained two great snakes with beautiful markings of yellow and black. Even as I looked they were coiled, with their flat heads erect and their bead-like eyes shining like tiny stars in the shadow, their bodies half-hidden in a blanket.
“Nice kind of pets, to keep in a house,” observed Patterson. “That’s one of them that’s escaped into the garden, I expect.”
“I quite agree,” I said, “this place is decidedly the reverse of cheerful. Hadn’t we better report at once? There’s been a mysterious tragedy here, and immediate efforts should be made to trace the assassin.”
“But, my dear fellow, how do you know they’ve been murdered?” he argued. “There’s no marks of violence whatever.”
“Not as far as we’ve been able to discover. A doctor can tell us more after the post-mortem,” I responded.
There were many very strange features connected with this remarkable discovery. My friend’s reluctance to commence an investigation, his firm resolve not to report the discovery, the mysterious voice at the telephone, the fact that some experimental scientist had his laboratory in that house, and the revelation of the unaccountable tragedy itself, were all so extraordinary that I stood utterly bewildered.