from the museum to the library and made his escape through the window when the lights went out! See here, let’s prove it. Call everybody who was present when Milsted died and ask them, separately, if they can remember whether or not the library door opened about the same time the confusion preceding the shooting began.”
Dr. Nesbit stepped to the door and summoned the six witnesses to the tragedy, admitting them one at a time and asking each the question suggested by the Professor. Rosalie and three others recalled there had been a faint squeak “as though a door was being opened carefully” before Milsted had appeared to go berserker. One of the others thought the museum door had opened a little—“blown by a draft,” she assumed—while the sixth witness remembered nothing of the sort.
“That’s the best proof in the world that the door did open,” the Professor insisted. “If every one of them had agreed it did, we might have assumed your question suggested their answers—human memory is a tricky thing, at best—and that they thought they recalled something which actually didn’t happen; but diverse testimony in such a case is its own best proof.”
“‘Saul, Saul, almost thou persuadest me,’” Coroner Nesbit protested with a laugh. “Seriously, though, Professor, you’ve got me thinking. I still believe this is a suicide, but everything you’ve suggested could have happened just as you say—maybe.”
“‘Maybe’ be hanged!” the Professor blazed! “It did, I tell you!”
“But what about Herman, or whatever its name was, that led to the tragedy?” Nesbit asked, half of himself, half of the professor. “As I understand it, Milsted claimed someone had stolen some sort of heathen idol from his museum and was throwing a catch-the-low-down-cuss party when he was—when he shot himself.”
“I was coming to that,” Forrester answered. “When Mr. Milsted first accused one of us of stealing the statue of Hanuman, I thought he might be indulging in some ill-timed joke, or staging a show with some ulterior motive. He was a queer sort, and I never fancied him very much. But I’m convinced now the jewel really was stolen, and stolen by the person who hid in the cabinet and escaped through the window and murdered Milsted.”
“How do you make that out?” Nesbit wanted to know. “Nobody’s seen the thief, or the stolen property, for that matter—”
“Oh, yes, somebody has,” Forrester corrected, drawing the little golden image with its ruby eyes and nostrils from his pocket and handing it to the astonished coroner. “I found this outside in the snow, directly under that window, just where a person, jumping from that height and landing on slippery ground, might have dropped it. I wish you’d take official charge of it for a few days and tell no one about it till you hear from me.”
Briefly he described his search for clues outside the house, the finding of the idol and the finger marks where its loser had made a hurried hunt for it.
“Well, I’ll be—this trick is yours, Professor,” the young doctor agreed. “I’m still holding to the hypothesis of suicide, but we’ll impanel no jury tonight, or until I’ve had time to perform an autopsy on the body. Can I reach you by phone if I need you?”
“Of course,” the Professor assured him.
“All right. I’ll take the names and addresses of everyone present, and dismiss ’em, pending the inquest. Whether you’re right or wrong, Professor, you’ve given me more mental gymnastics this evening than I’ve had since I attended the University.” He held out his hand with a genial smile. “Good-night, sir.”
*****
“Lambert Nesbit speaking, Professor,” a cheerful voice announced at the telephone, shortly after noon the following day. “Pick up the marbles; you win.”
“Eh, how’s that—” Professor Forrester began, but the coroner was bursting with information and refused to be interrupted.
“I autopsied Milsted’s body this morning,” he continued, “and everything points to your theory of murder. In fact, it couldn’t have been suicide. When I removed the skull cap I found a bullet had passed through the frontal bone slightly to the left of the frontal suture, penetrating the left superior frontal lobe of the brain, piercing the proecentral fissure with a downward course, and traveling almost to the horizontal fissure of Sylvinus. Do you get me, or am I too technical?”
“Not at all,” Forrester assured him. “Remember, Nesbit, I was studying comparative anatomy, putting in six hours a week in the dissecting room, when you were learning to spin a top and play marbles for keeps. Go on, what else did you find?”
“Well, first off, I realized that it would have been impossible for a man to shoot himself in that manner unless he held the stock of the pistol above the level of his head—I experimented on myself by holding a gun with the muzzle touching my forehead where the wound in Milsted’s head was. He might have done it by bracing the barrel against his head and pulling the trigger with his thumb, but, as you demonstrated last night, Milsted was clutching the pistol with the rigidity of a cadaveric spasm, which must have occurred at the moment of death, and his forefinger was on the trigger. There wasn’t a Chinaman’s chance of his shifting his grip on the stock between the shot and the time death ensued, for he must have died instantly from that wound.”
“My boy,” Forrester assured him, “I’m beginning to have hopes of you. It was hard to convince you last night, but I’ll admit you’re not one of those thick-headed zanies who persist in error just for the sake of making fools of themselves.”
“Thanks,” the coroner replied dryly. “But you ain’t heard nothin’ yet. When I compared the bullet in Milsted’s brain with a cartridge from the magazine of his pistol, I found the lethal missile was a soft lead, conical bullet of about 20-20 caliber, while Milsted’s gun is a Lüger and shoots a .25 cupro-nickel-coated bullet. I was talkin’ with a lieutenant in the State Constabulary about it today, and he told me those guns have a muzzle velocity of about twelve hundred feet a second, and if Milsted had shot himself with his own gun the bullet would have gone clear through his head and probably through the wall behind him, as well.”
“I could have told you that,” Forrester replied. “Have you any other information?”
“Not right now; but there’s not much doubt Milsted was murdered. What sticks in my craw, though, is who did it, and why, and why the devil didn’t anyone hear a second shot? D’ye reckon both parties could have fired at once, so the two reports sounded like one?”
“Um; that’s possible,” Forrester agreed, “but you’ll remember that five of the six witnesses to the tragedy fail to recall seeing anything resembling a man at the window when Milsted died, and they’d not have been apt to miss seeing a pistol flash. No, I don’t think—here, wait a minute! How long can you postpone the inquest?”
“Well, there’s no limit prescribed by law, but the jury has to be sworn super visum corporis—on viewing the body, you know—and we can’t keep poor old Milsted above ground indefinitely, waiting to swear in the jury. Tell you what I’ll do, if you say. I’ll impanel a jury, swear ’em in over the body, and then continue the inquest subject to call. I can get away with that, all right. What were you going to suggest?”
“Take that bullet you found in the brain down to Roach’s sporting goods store and have one of their arms experts look at it. I noticed an English air-pistol on display in their window the other day, and it strikes me an air-gun might be the explanation to the whole affair. If the murder had been committed with one of those weapons we’d have about the same amount of
