When the bodies had been taken up to a bedroom, Sir Clinton and the doctor carried out a minute examination. Each victim had been struck by three darts. In the case of Neville Shandon, the wounds suggested that the shots had been fired from the front and rather to one side. Roger’s body, on the other hand, contained one dart imbedded in the back of the neck, and two in the upper part of the rear surface between the spine and the shoulder on the left side. Beyond the punctures made by the darts, neither victim showed a trace of either wound or struggle. “Poison, obviously,” Sir Clinton concluded. The doctor agreed, adding in confirmation: “None of these darts came near a vital spot. Alone, they’d never have killed a man.” “Can you guess what poison was used?” The doctor shook his head. “Not my line. Some of these Indian arrow-poisons, perhaps. Ardsley could tell you something about them, most likely.” “Who’s Ardsley? Could one get hold of him quickly?” “He lives less than a mile from here. He’s a medical; but he doesn’t practise. Curiously enough, toxicology is his line, more or less. He’s a bit of a physiologist, too. I know he has a vivisection licence. You might do worse than look him up. He might be able to give you a hint.” Sir Clinton looked thoughtful for a moment. “What worries me is that a man can’t be in two places at once. I’m going to take over this case myself, and there’s enough work on hand in the next hour to keep two men busy. It’s time I’m up against at present.” The doctor, reflecting on the conflicting calls of a country Practice, was inclined to think that Sir Clinton seemed to make a fuss about very little. CHAPTER V. The Evidence in the Case When the doctor had completed his work and left the room, Sir Clinton pulled the tin box of darts from his pocket and went over to the window to examine it. The box itself suggested nothing in the way of a clue; it was of a common pattern. He turned from it to the darts themselves. “That brown stuff on the feathering is evidently the poison, whatever it may be,” he reflected. “It doesn’t seem much of a dose to kill a man, especially if one assumes that it was a quick death. Even ordinary snake poison would hardly do the trick quick enough. And yet these fellows didn’t seem to have moved much after they were hit, to judge by the look of the ground.” He took a Coddington lens from his pocket and scanned one of the darts carefully; then with a pin he probed a dark spot near the point of the projectile. “So that’s it! He’s drilled a hole clean through the metal and filled up the hollow with poison. That would mean a fair quantity driven well home under the skin; and the blood would soon wash the stuff out of the cavity, since both ends are open. An ingenious devil, evidently.” He thoughtfully replaced the dart in the box; but before putting the tin back into his pocket he counted the missiles carefully. “Eleven of them here; and six more in the two bodies.”