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Page 42
I glanced up and down the heavy hanging silk, looking for the
glint of fine sharp steel as Kennedy had done before starting his
inspection with the glass. The color of the silk, a beautiful
heavy velour, was a strange dark tint very close to the grained
black-brown of the woodwork. Both the thickness of the material
and its dull shade made the portieres serve ideally for the
purpose assumed now both by Kennedy and myself. A tiny needle
might remain secreted within their folds for days. Nothing,
certainly, caught my naked eye.
At last a little exclamation from Kennedy showed us that he had
discovered something. I moved closer, as did Mackay.
"It's lucky none of us toyed with these curtains yesterday," he
remarked, with a slight smile of gratification. "There might have
been more than one lying where Stella Lamar lies at the present
moment."
With wholesome respect neither Mackay nor myself touched the silk
as Kennedy pointed. There were two small holes, almost
microscopic, in the close-woven material. About the one there was
the slightest discoloration. Not a fraction of an inch away I saw
two infinitesimal spots of a dark brownish-red tinge.
"What does it mean?" I asked, although I could guess.
"The dark spots are blood, the discoloration the poison from the
needle."
"And the needle?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "That's where our very scientific
culprit has forestalled me, Walter! The needle was in these
curtains all day yesterday. Unfortunately, I did not study the
manuscript, did not attach any importance to Miss Lamar's scene
at the portieres."
"The man who broke in last night--"
"Removed the needle, but"--almost amused--"not the traces of it.
You see, Walter, after all, the scientific detective cannot be
forestalled even by the most scientific criminal. There is
nothing in the world which does not leave its unmistakable mark
behind, provided you can read it. The hole in the cloth serves me
quite as well as the needle itself."
Very suddenly a voice from behind us interrupted.
"Find something?"
I turned, startled, to see Emery Phelps. There was a distinct
eagerness in the banker's expression.
"Yes!" Kennedy faced him, undisturbed, apparently not surprised.
His scrutiny of Phelps's face was frank and searching. "Yes," he
repeated, "bit by bit the guilty man is revealing himself to us."
XII
EMERY PHELPS
"There--there is something the matter with the curtains?" Phelps
suggested.
Kennedy pointed to the two holes and the spots. "Miss Lamar met
her death from poison introduced into her system through a tiny
scratch from a prepared needle."
"Yes?" Phelps was calm now, and cool. I wondered if it were
pretense on his part. "What have these little marks to do with
that?"
"Don't you see?" rejoined Kennedy. "If some one had come here
before the scene in the picture was played; had thrust a small
needle, perhaps a hollow needle from a hypodermic syringe,
through the heavy thickness of this silk--thrust it in here, the
point sticking out here--well, there would be two holes left
where the threads were forced apart, like this!" Kennedy took his
stickpin, demonstrating.
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