Pink was a clever surgeon who masked his capabilities behind an easy-going good-humour. His poor patients were often convulsed by his amusing remarks, while at the houses of the county people he was always a welcome guest on account of his inexhaustible fund of droll stories, his shrewd wit, and his outspoken appreciation of a good dinner. His odd ways were the idiosyncrasies of genius, for without doubt he was as expert a surgeon as there was outside Harley Street, and I myself had heard praise of him from the mouths of certain London men with big “names.”
The manner in which he examined the unfortunate young man who had so suddenly fallen a victim of an assassin showed that he was intensely interested. He grunted once or twice and sniffed suspiciously, and with some gusto took a pinch of snuff from his heavy silver box. Then, having carefully examined the man’s right hand, he turned to me again, saying, as he pointed to it—
“That’s strange, Woodhouse, isn’t it?”
“What?” I inquired, detecting nothing.
“Can’t you see. His hand is clenched. He grasped something just at the moment when he was struck.”
“Well?”
He held the lantern closer to the cold stiff hand, and pointing to the thumb that was closely clenched upon the fingers, said—
“Can’t you see anything there?”
I looked, and then for the first time detected that beneath the thumb was something white—a tiny piece of white fur!
“That’s out of a woman’s jacket, or boa, or something,” he declared, gradually disengaging it, and placing it in the hollow of his hand for closer inspection. “There are one or two black hairs with it, showing it, I believe, to be ermine fur—a woman who wore some garment of ermine.”