“Gone! I’m afraid,” he said at last, in a low voice full of emotion, as he critically examined the eyes.
Jack Sainsbury then repeated his friend’s strange words, whereupon the great pathologist—the expert whose evidence was sought by the Home Office in all mysteries of crime—exclaimed—
“The whole affair is certainly a mystery. Poor Jerrold is dead, without a doubt. But how did he die?”
Thomasson explained in detail Mr Trustram’s departure, and how, a quarter of an hour later, Sainsbury had arrived.
“The doctor had never before, to my knowledge, locked this door,” he went on. “I heard him cheerily wishing Mr Trustram good-night as he came down the stairs, and I heard him say that he was not to fail to call to-morrow night at nine, as they would then carry the inquiry further.”
“What inquiry?” asked Sir Houston quickly.
“Ah! sir—that, of course, I don’t know,” was the servant’s response. “My master seemed in the highest of spirits. I just caught sight of him at the head of the stairs, smoking his pipe as usual after his day’s work.”
The great pathologist knit his brows and cast down his head thoughtfully. He was a man of great influence, the head of his profession—for, being the expert of the Home Office, his work, clever, ingenious, and yet cool and incisive, was to lay the accusing finger upon the criminal.
Hardly a session passed at the Old Bailey but Sir Houston Bird appeared in the witness box, spruce in his morning-coat, and presenting somewhat the appearance of a bank-clerk; yet, in his cold unemotional words, he explained to the jury the truth as written plainly by scientific investigation. Many murderers had been hanged upon his words, always given with that strange, deliberate hesitation, and yet words—that could never, for a moment, be shaken by counsel for the defence.
Indeed, long ago defending counsel had given up cross-examination on any evidence presented by Sir Houston Bird, who had at his service the most expert chemists and analysts which our time could produce.