“You think the murderer was an Englishman, then?”
“Not exactly that, but I’ve got what you’d probably call a ‘hunch,’ Nesbit.”
“Good enough. We’ll play it through. I’ll see what Roach’s man has to say and report later. We can hold the inquest up a week or so if necessary, while we gumshoe around for more dope.”
“I don’t think we’ll need wait that long,” the Professor told him, as he hung up the phone and resumed marking a pile of examination papers.
*****
“Missie like buy ve’y pretty fancy work?” a round-faced young man with somnolent eyes, clad in a threadbare overcoat and rather decrepit fez, demanded the following afternoon, when Rosalie answered the ringing of the front doorbell.
“No, I—” the Professor’s pretty ward began, then checked her refusal, half spoken, as her large, topaz eyes suddenly narrowed the tiniest fraction of an inch. “Come in,” she invited. “I won’t promise to buy anything; but I’ll look.”
“Missie like my t’ings ve’y much,” the peddler announced confidently, as he followed her down the hall and into the living room. “See—” he opened an imitation alligator-hide suitcase and displayed the usual stock in trade of the itinerant Armenian huckster—“ve’y pretty, ve’y cheap, Missie. I t’ink you like buy some, mebbe so.”
Attracted by the voices, Professor Forrester put down his book and strolled into the living room, leaving the study door open behind him.
“Shopping again?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
Rosalie had spent almost a year in occidental freedom since the Professor rescued her from the entourage of a certain villainous half-caste from Singapore, and the avidity with which she conformed to the Western custom of permitting women to buy their own finery had caused the Professor more than a little amusement.
“Yes, Uncle Harvey,” she returned, throwing him a radiant smile. “This gentleman says he’s from Armenia, and he has some of the loveliest things.”
Forrester looked with astonishment from the girl to the mass of miscellaneous horrors spread on the floor. Even a layman could see these alleged Madeira and Normandy scarves and Egyptian table covers were of the home-brewed variety, the sort which are stamped out, thousands at a time, by machinery in New Jersey, and foisted on a credulous public by smooth-spoken knaves from the Levant.
The Professor, who knew the home industries of every people in the world as well as he understood their dialects, could recognize the counterfeits with one eye closed, and Rosalie, who had spent ten years of her life in the heart of the East should certainly have been the last one to be deceived by such crude forgeries. Yet there she stood, apparently enraptured, and begged the vendor to display more of his atrocities.
“This ve’y ni-ce piece work,” that worthy commended, throwing a cotton cloth thickly encrusted with machine embroidery over his right arm so that it swathed him from shoulder to wrist. “This made ’specially for ladies who like ni-ce t’ings.”
His stock patter swept rapidly on, detailing the manifold perfections of the luncheon cloth, but his sleepy eyes traveled round the room, glanced through the open door of the study, and rested on a tiny brass paper weight which stood on the Professor’s desk. The knick-knack was an inexpensive piece of Japanese work, executed in polished brass, and represented a diminutive monkey in the act of holding his paws before his mouth—one of the familiar “speak no evil” symbols to be found in every curio store. Just then it glittered in a ray of the afternoon sun as though it were burnished gold instead of hammered brass. The young man’s eyes shone with a sudden fierce light of jubilation as they encountered the toy, and he moved a step nearer the study door.
“Ye-es, this ve’y ni-ce cover for ni-ce lady’s table—” he drawled, fumbling in the side pocket of his overcoat beneath the cotton cloth which still draped his arm.
“Darwaza bundo!” Rosalie exclaimed shrilly.
The peddler started as though stung by a yellow-jacket, his right arm writhing under the covering of the sheet of embroidery like a snake beneath a blanket.
With a furious movement he whipped the cloth from his shoulder, wrenched something from his pocket and wheeled, backing toward the study with long, cautious steps.
“Look out, Uncle Harvey!” Rosalie’s warning came sharply. Next instant she launched herself across the room like a fury, rushing between the Armenian and the astonished Professor.
“Dog, son of filth, unworthy offspring of a he-goat and a bad smell!” she spat at the hawker in a torrent of Hindustani, her amber eyes glowing balefully, her lovely mouth distended like that of an angry cat.
There was a flash of steel in the afternoon sunlight, something like a flickering flame leaped to life in the girl’s right hand and swept forward and down like a cracking whiplash. The peddler screamed with amazement and pain and dropped the object he had half drawn from his pocket.
Rosalie’s slim, silk-and-satin-shod foot shot out, kicking the thing out of reach as she menaced the wounded huckster with a ten-inch, wavy-bladed Malay kris.
“Tie him up, Uncle Harvey,” she bade, thrusting her knife forward to within an inch of the Armenian’s belt buckle, then, to the peddler, “Stand still, grandson of a toad, or by the Three Holy Ones, I shall slit your unclean throat and pour forth your vile blood as an offering to Kali!” The peddler followed her advice to the letter, though his frightened glance turned this way and that, any direction but toward the girl’s fierce eyes and the glittering, razor-sharp blade of her dagger.
Seizing a length of lace from the open suitcase, Forrester hastily twisted it into a rope and trussed the huckster’s elbows behind him—a far more effective manner of binding than strapping the wrists together—then tore a length from one of the cotton embroideries and bandaged the fellow’s wounded wrist.
“Sit down,” he ordered curtly, motioning the captive to a chair; then to Rosalie: “I hope you know what you’re about, young woman. If you’ve run amuck, we’re in for a tidy little lawsuit, if not for a criminal prosecution.”
“Hou!” Rosalie laughed, lapsing into oriental vernacular, which she still did under the stress of excitement. “Behold, my lord, what your slave has discovered.” With a quick fillip, she removed the fez from the peddler’s head, displaying a small device in red painted on his forehead near the hairline.
It was a small crescent which nearly enclosed a tiny disc within its horns, and Forrester started at the sight. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s the caste mark of a follower of Siva!”
“Yes, my lord, it is nothing less,” the girl replied with a triumphant smile. “When this base-born descendant of a hyena and a mangy female monkey appeared at my master’s house, wishing to show me his detestable wares, I was about to send him on his way, but the day is warm for winter and he put up his hand to wipe his brow, so that I did behold the caste mark for an instant as he put back his cap. Many an Armenian have I seen—we had hundreds of them in Singapore—but never have I beheld one who wore the sign of Siva.
“Then I did remember, master of my life, how the villainous Chandra Roi (may the vultures devour his eyeballs!) sometimes hired these Siva fellows to do his filthy work when even the Chinamen would not,
