it, almost commandeered it. I was not surprised to see Kee stick to his first decision.
“I appreciate all you say, Mr. Ames,” Kee said, “but I repeat I am not willing to take a case until I look into it. Do not delay further, but let us go at once to the scene of the tragedy.”
Ames glowered, but without another word he led the way from the room and turned toward the staircase.
The broad steps, carpeted with red velvet, branched half way up, and turning to the right, Ames conducted us to Sampson Tracy’s rooms. They were in a wing that had been flung out at the back of the house, probably as a later addition to the structure. Entrance was through a private hall, and then into a foyer or ante-room, from which led several doors.
“This is the bedroom,” said the Inspector, taking a key from his pocket as he paused before one of the doors.
“I thought you had to break in,” Moore said, looking at the unmarred door.
“Not exactly,” Farrell told him. “The door was locked and the key inside, in the lock. But they got the garage mechanician up here, and he managed to dislodge the key and then get the door unlocked with his tools.”
He opened the door, and we filed in, the Inspector first, then Moore and I, then Ames and Detective March.
Farrell closed and locked the door behind us, and it was then that I saw the strange, the grotesque spectacle of Sampson Tracy’s deathbed.
The first thing that caught my attention and from which I found it well nigh impossible to detach my vision was the red-feather duster.
A full plume of bright red feathers seemed to crown the head on the pillow.
The handle of the duster had been thrust down behind and under the head, and only the red plume showed, of such fine, light feathers that a few fronds waved at a step across the room or a movement near the bed.
Then I looked at the rest of the strange picture.
Sampson Tracy was a large and heavy man. His head was large, and his face was of the conformation sometimes called pear-shaped. He had heavy jaws, pendulous jowls and a large mouth. Clean shaven as to face, his hair was thick and rather long. His eyebrows were bushy, and his half opened eyes of a glassy and yet dull blue.
His hair was iron-gray, and round his brow were wreathed some blossoms of blue larkspur. Across his chest, diagonally, was a garland of the same flowers. The blossoms were not tied or twined, they had merely been laid in a row in order to form a vinelike garland.
The right hand, bent to rest on his breast, held a crucifix, and in the left hand was, of all things, a small orange.
His head lay on one large pillow, and on the other pillow was a folded handkerchief and also two small sweet crackers. And encircling the head and shoulders, framing all these strange details, a long and wide scarf, of soft and filmy scarlet chiffon, a beautiful scarf, from a woman’s point of view, but a peculiar adjunct to a man’s taking-off.
I stared at all this, quite forgetting to look at Moore to see how he was taking it.
When I did glance up at him, hearing his voice, I saw he had evidently completed his scrutiny of the bed and had turned to Harper Ames.
“Why do you think Mr. Tracy was murdered?” Kee asked of the glum-faced one.
“What other theory is possible?” Ames returned. “A suicide would not place all that flumadiddle about himself. A natural death wouldn’t have such decorations, either. So, he was killed, either by some one with a most distorted sense of humour, or there is a meaning in each seeming bit of foolishness.”
“What did he die of, exactly?”
“That we don’t know yet, the doctor will be here any minute, and the coroner, too.”
Even as he spoke, Doctor Rogers arrived. He was the family physician, and as Farrell opened the door to his knock, he went straight to the bed.
“What’s all this rubbish?” he exclaimed, reaching for the scarf.
“Don’t touch it, If you can help it, Doctor,” March implored him. “It may be evidence——”
“Evidence of what?”
“Crime—murder—or is it a natural death?”
Doctor Rogers was making his examination with as little disturbance as might be of the flowers and scarf.
But the feather duster he pulled from its place and flung across the room. The orange followed it, and the crackers.
“Pick them up if you want them for clues,” he said; “you know where they were found, and I won’t have my friend photographed with all those monkey tricks about him!”
March picked up the things, with a due regard for possible finger prints, and stored them away in a drawer of the chiffonier.
Finally, Doctor Rogers straightened up from his examining, and rose to his feet.
“Apoplexy,” he said. “What’s all this talk about murder? Sampson Tracy is dead of apoplexy, as I have often told him he would be, if he kept on with his plan of eating and drinking too much and taking little or no exercise. He had an apoplectic stroke last night which proved fatal. He died, as nearly as I can judge, about two o’clock. As to these foolish trinkets, they were brought in here later and placed round him after he was dead. You can see that though he seemed to hold the cross and the orange in his hands, they weren’t tightly held, the fingers were bent round them after death. It must have been the deed of some child or of some servant who is mentally lacking. Is there a girl of twelve or fourteen on the place? But I’ve no time to tarry now. I’m on my way to the train. I’m going for my vacation on a trip through Canada and down the Pacific coast. I’d throw it over, of course, if I could be of any use. But I can’t, and my wife is waiting for me. I’ve given my statement as to Tracy’s death, and I know I’m right. Here comes Coroner Hart now. I say, Hart, the Inspector and Mr. Ames here will tell you my findings, and I know you’ll corroborate me. It’s all a terrible pity, but I knew he was digging his grave with his teeth. No amount of advice did a bit of good. As to the flowers and rags, look for a twelve-year-old girl.... There are the ones who kick up such bobberies. Maybe the housekeeper has a grandchild, or maybe there is a kiddy in the chauffeur’s or gardener’s cottage. Good-bye, I must run. Sorry, but to lose this local train means to upset our reservations all along the trip.”
The Doctor hurried away, yet so positive had been his diagnosis, and so logical his disinclination to linger when he could be of no possible use, that we all forgave him in our minds.
The Coroner gave a start at the masses of flowers, somewhat disarranged by Doctor Rogers’s manipulations, and drew nearer to the body.
Farrell told him how things had been before Doctor Rogers removed the feather duster and threw out the orange and crackers.
“He ought to have let them alone!” Hart declared, angrily.
“It doesn’t really matter,” put in March, “I know exactly how they were lying, and anyway, Rogers says it’s a natural death.”
“Natural? With
