The Great Fog Read Online Free Page B

the underside of that top board of the ladder, are the print or outline of a horseshoe, or, if you like to put it in criminal-court language, of the weapon with which Mrs. Smirke was killed. And the small ‘mouth’ in that ladder’s head, on its left side, is the gun port through which Mrs. Smirke was shot.”
    â€œNow, Doctor dear, do be sensible,” broke in Sergeant Skillin. “With all yer blarney, ye know that I haven’t the slightest idea of what ye are talking about. Glory be! The poor woman was not shot. Though she fell as though she had been.”
    â€œSergeant, as always, you are right in what you observe, or have told you in evidence, but, being more used to courts than I, you sometimes fear to go as far as you really see. Mrs. Smirke was shot, shot in the ear.”
    â€œSounds like Hamlet to me, and Hamlet’s a good play but a bad crime story.”
    â€œYou’re right, then, we must have a little more proof.”
    â€œCan you get it?”
    â€œI only want one piece more, literally a grain, to tip old justice’s scales, even though they’re rusty. And you can get it for me. We’re too old hands to be upset by gruesome detail, you and I. Get me the right ear of the dead woman. I must have the real ear. The outer part doesn’t matter.”
    â€œIt’ll need going through a few forms, you know?”
    â€œWell, again I wager we have time. What we’re looking for will keep.”
    Sergeant Skillin was impressed. That ladder had been tampered with, carefully, queerly and, further, he knew Mrs. Smirke’s ear had been doctored by a doctor who did not wish her well. Had the ladder top on the night of the murder held the key? He did not like to think he might have overlooked that. Could the dead woman’s ear be the lock that key fitted in? “I’ll get it for you,” he said.
    He had only to get the papers through. Dr. Wendover and the police surgeon managed the anatomical side between them. Within twenty-four hours he received a call from the Doctor’s house, asking him to come over. He was taken at once to the Doctor’s private laboratory at the top of the house. As soon as he entered he saw a microscope standing under a high light and he noticed, pointing at the specimen platform, an electrical rig-up of some sort.
    â€œSergeant, will you please look down that microscope?” were the Doctor’s first words.
    Silently, Sergeant Skillin took his place on the stool and peered down into the lit field. The Doctor’s voice at his shoulder said, “What you are now observing is some fluid from the semicircular canal of the dead woman’s ear. It is, of course, not very clear. The only definite things are some tiny black spots.”
    â€œI see them,” reported the Sergeant.
    â€œKeep your eye on them.”
    He heard a switch click, and exclaimed, “Oh, the small black spots have rushed ahead!”
    The Doctor’s voice at his shoulder said, “There, that’s all; that’s my final demonstration.”
    â€œBut what is it at all?”
    â€œWell, first, what did I do? I switched on a magnet. What followed? The black grains rushed toward it. What, therefore, are they? Minute steel dust, rustless steel. Where do they come from? The right inner ear of Mrs. Smirke, deceased. What would they do there when she was alive?” He paused.
    The Sergeant hesitated, “How would I know?”
    â€œYou do know,” the Doctor continued. “They would be in the fluid of her semicircular canals, or one of them. They wouldn’t corrode—they are, as we surgeons say, ‘inert’—they won’t set up any chemical reaction. They, therefore, would do her no harm. They wouldn’t upset her. She’d probably hardly know she was wearing such a strange interior decoration until—until she should, by chance, bring that right ear within an inch or so of a fairly