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Page 4
As I looked more carefully I saw now that her full, well-rounded
face was contorted with either pain or fear--perhaps both. Even
through the make-up one could see that her face was blotched and
swollen. Also, the muscles were contorted; the eyes looked as if
they might be bulging under the lids; and there was a bluish
tinge to her skin. Evidently death had come quickly, but it had
not been painless.
"Even the coroner has not disturbed the body," Mackay hastened to
explain to Kennedy. "The players, the camera men, all were sent
out of the room the moment Doctor Blake was certain something
more than a natural cause lay behind her death. Mr. Phelps
telephoned to me, and upon my arrival I ordered the doors and
windows closed, posted my deputies to prevent any interference
with anything in the room, left my instructions that everyone was
to be detained, then got in touch with you as quickly as I
could."
Kennedy turned to him. Something in the tone of his voice showed
that he meant his compliment. "I'm glad, Mackay, to be called in
by some one who knows enough not to destroy evidence; who
realizes that perhaps the slightest disarrangement of a rug, for
instance, may be the only clue to a murder. It's--it's rare!"
The little district attorney beamed. If he had found it necessary
to walk across the floor just then he would have strutted. I
smiled because I wanted Kennedy to show again his marvelous skill
in tracing a crime to its perpetrator. I was anxious that nothing
should be done to hamper him.
II
THE TINY SCRATCH
Kennedy, before his own examination of the body, turned to Doctor
Blake. "Tell me just what you found when you arrived," he
directed.
The physician, whose practice embraced most of the wealthy
families in and around Tarrytown, was an unusually tall, iron-
gray-haired man of evident competency. It was very plain that he
resented his unavoidable connection with the case.
"She was still alive," he responded, thoughtfully, "although
breathing with difficulty. Nearly everyone had clustered about
her, so that she was getting little air, and the room was stuffy
from the lights they had been using in taking the scene. They
told me she dropped unconscious and that they couldn't revive
her, but at first it did not occur to me that it might be
serious. I thought perhaps the heat--"
"You saw nothing suspicious," interrupted Kennedy, "nothing in
the actions or manner of anyone in the room?"
"No, when I first entered I didn't suspect anything out of the
way. I had them send everyone into the next room, except Manton
and Phelps, and had the doors and windows thrown open to give her
air. Then when I examined her I detected what seemed to me to be
both a muscular and nervous paralysis, which by that time had
proceeded pretty far. As I touched her she opened her eyes, but
she was unable to speak. She was breathing with difficulty; her
heart action was weakening so rapidly that I had little
opportunity to apply restorative measures."
"What do you think caused the death?"
"So far, I can make no satisfactory explanation." The doctor
shrugged his shoulders very slightly. "That is why I advised an
immediate investigation. I did not care to write a death
certificate."
"You have no hypothesis?"
"If she died from any natural organic disorder, the signs were
lacking by which I could trace it. Everything indicates the
opposite, however. It would be hard for me to say whether the
paralysis of respiration or of the heart actually caused her
death. If it was due to poison--Well, to me the whole affair is
shrouded in mystery. The symptoms indicated nothing I could
recognize with any degree of certainty."
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