The body of poor Hen Smitz had not yet been removed from the bag in
which it had been found, and it was to the bag Mr. Gubb gave his
closest attention. The bag--in order that the body might be
identified--had not been ripped, but had been cut, and not a stitch
had been severed. It did not take Mr. Gubb a moment to see that Hen
Smitz had not been sewed in a bag at all. He had been sewed in
burlap--burlap "yard goods," to use a shopkeeper's term--and it was
burlap identical with that used by Mr. Wiggins and his crew. It was no
loose bag of burlap--but a close-fitting wrapping of burlap; a cocoon
of burlap that had been drawn tight around the body, as burlap is
drawn tight around the carcass of sheep for shipment, like a mummy's
wrappings.
It would have been utterly impossible for Hen Smitz to have sewed
himself into the casing, not only because it bound his arms tight to
his sides, but because the burlap was lapped over and sewed from the
outside. This, once and for all, ended the suicide theory. The
question was: Who was the murderer?
As Philo Gubb turned away from the bier, Undertaker Bartman entered
the morgue.
"The crowd outside is getting impatient, Mr. Gubb," he said in his
soft, undertakery voice. "It is getting on toward their lunch hour,
and they want to crowd into my front office to find out what you've
learned. I'm afraid they'll break my plate-glass windows, they're
pushing so hard against them. I don't want to hurry you, but if you
would go out and tell them Wiggins is the murderer they'll go away. Of
course there's no doubt about Wiggins being the murderer, since he has
admitted he asked the stock-keeper for the electric-light bulb."
"What bulb?" asked Philo Gubb.
"The electric-light bulb we found sewed inside this burlap when we
sliced it open," said Bartman. "Matter of fact, we found it in Hen's
hand. O'Toole took it for a clue and I guess it fixes the murder on
Wiggins beyond all doubt. The stock-keeper says Wiggins got it from
him."
"And what does Wiggins remark on that subject?" asked Mr. Gubb.
"Not a word," said Bartman. "His lawyer told him not to open his
mouth, and he won't. Listen to that crowd out there!"
"I will attend to that crowd right presently," said P. Gubb, sternly.
"What I should wish to know now is why Mister Wiggins went and sewed
an electric-light bulb in with the corpse for."
"In the first place," said Mr. Bartman, "he didn't sew it in with any
corpse, because Hen Smitz wasn't a corpse when he was sewed in that
burlap, unless Wiggins drowned him first, for Dr. Mortimer says Hen
Smitz died of drowning; and in the second place, if you had a live man
to sew in burlap, and had to hold him while you sewed him, you'd be
liable to sew anything in with him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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