“I did. From certain facts within my knowledge I suspected that the Baron had been deliberately killed. The allegations of the valet, Folcker, strengthened my suspicions, hence I travelled from London and pursued my own independent inquiries, which have resulted in the discovery of the little piece of blade inside the glove which the Baron wore when he went to interview his mysterious visitor at The Hague.”
“But what evidence have we that the mysterious visitor—the individual who has been referred to in the report as the man with the round horn glasses—had anything to do with the affair?”
“According to the Baron’s servant the visitor was left alone for a few moments in the room where van Veltrup had put down his gloves in order to go out and speak to his valet, who on that day was acting as his chauffeur. It was in those moments of his absence that the unknown visitor put the infected scrap of steel into the Baron’s glove.”
“Did he not wear the gloves on his way back to Amsterdam?” asked the police official, as he laid down his thin cigar.
“No,” I replied. “The valet is certain that instead of putting on his gloves he thrust them into the pocket of his linen dust-coat. Folcker says that when his master returned he took the gloves from the pocket of the linen coat and placed them on the table in the hall—as was his habit. It was only when the Baron was going out again that he put on the left-hand one, and then suddenly drew it off and rubbed his fingers. The first finger of his left hand had undoubtedly been cut, and hence infected with that substance which causes almost instant death and the exact symptoms of heart disease.”
“Orosin—did you say?” asked the head of the Amsterdam police.
“Yes,” I replied. “Orosin—the most dangerous, subtle and easily administered poison known to our modern toxicologists. And your great financier Baron van Veltrup has died by the hand of one who has wilfully administered it!”
“Well,” said the stolid man with the scraggy beard, rather reluctantly, “I confess that this has come to me as a perfect revelation.”
“You have only to order the exhumation of the Baron’s body, and an examination of the left hand, to be convinced that what this Englishman, Mr. Garfield, has discovered is the actual truth!” declared Doctor Obelt, whose reputation as a pathologist was the highest in the Netherlands, and against whose opinion even the Chief of Police of Amsterdam could raise no word.