"Now, you know, this is really about the most serious and important
thing I've heard, so far," he said, when Mr. Cazalette had finished.
"Just let's sum it up. Salter Quick is murdered in a strange and
lonely place. Not for his goods, for all his money and his
valuables--not inconsiderable--are found on him. But the murderer was
in search of something that he believed to be on Salter Quick, for he
thoroughly searched his clothing, slashed its linings, turned his
pockets out--and probably, no, we may safely say certainly, failed in
his search. He did not get what he was after--any more than his
fellow-murderer who slew Noah Quick, some hundreds of miles away from
here, about the very same time, got what he was after. But now comes
in Mr. Cazalette. Mr. Cazalette, inadvertently, never thinking what he
was doing, draws public attention to certain marks and scratches,
evidently made on purpose, in Salter Quick's tobacco-box. Do you see
my point, gentlemen? The murderer hears of this and says to himself,
'That box is the thing I want!' So--he appropriates it, at the
inquest! But even then, so faint and almost illegible are the marks
within the lid, he doesn't find exactly what he wants. But he knows
that Mr. Cazalette was going to submit his photograph to an enlarging
process, which would make the marks clearer; he also knows Mr.
Cazalette's habits (a highly significant fact!) so he sets himself to
steal Mr. Cazalette's pocket-book, theorizing that Mr. Cazalette
probably has a copy of the enlarged photograph within it. And, this
morning, while Mr. Cazalette is bathing, he gets it! Gentlemen!--what
does this show? One thing as a certainty--the murderer is close at
hand!"
There was a dead silence--broken at last by a querulous murmur from
Mr. Cazalette himself.
"Ye may be as sure o' that, my man, as that Arthur's Seat o'erlooks
Edinbro'!" he said. "I wish I was as sure o' his identity!"
"Well, we know something that's gradually bringing us toward
establishing that," remarked Scarterfield. "Let me see that photograph
again, if you please."
The rest of us watched Scarterfield as he studied the thing over which
Mr. Cazalette and I had exercised our brains in the half-hour before
dinner. He seemed to get no more information from a long perusal of it
than we had got, and he finally threw it away from him across the
table, with a muttered exclamation which confessed discomfiture. Miss
Raven picked up the photograph.
"Aye!" mumbled Mr. Cazalette. "Let the lassie look at it! Maybe a
woman's brains is more use than a man's whiles."
"Often!" said the detective. "And if Miss Raven can make anything of
that----"
I saw that Miss Raven was already wishful to speak, and I hastened to
encourage her by throwing a word to Scarterfield.
"You'd be infinitely obliged to her, I'm sure," I put in. "It would be
a help?"
"No slight one!" said he. "There's something in that diagram.
But--what?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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