The Haunts & Horrors MEGAPACK®. Lawrence Watt-Evans
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the Railroad Section, but I tendered him a salute. “Gas?” he echoed as the corporal had when I completed my recital.
“If we haven’t five cases of carbon monoxide poisoning—one of ’em fatal—back there, I never rode an ambulance,” I answered shortly. “How it happened, I don’t know—”
“How’d you happen not to get it?” he broke in suspiciously.
“I was sitting by the window, and it worked loose in the night. Air blew directly in my face. That accounts for the girl’s not being more affected, too. She was facing backward, so didn’t get the full effect of ventilation, but her case seems the mildest. Major Amberson, who was farthest from the window, seems most seriously affected, but all of them were unconscious.”
We had reached the compartment as I concluded. “Help me with this poor chap,” I directed, bending to take up the dead man’s shoulders. “If they have a spare compartment, we can put him in that.”
“There’s one right down the corridor,” he told me. “Party debarked at Chálons when we took the train over from the Frogs.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” I answered. “If the French were still in charge, we’d have the devil of a time explaining—ah!” Amazement fairly squeezed the exclamation from me.
“What is it, sir?”
“This,” I answered, reaching under apKern’s feet and holding up a metal cylinder. The thing was six or eight inches long by about two inches in diameter, made of brass or copper, like those fire extinguishers carried on trucks and buses in America, and fitted with a nozzle and thumb-screw at one end.
“What’s it smell like?” he demanded, staring at my find uncomprehendingly.
“Like nothing. That’s just it—”
“How d’ye mean—”
“That cylinder was filled with CO—carbon monoxide—which is a colorless and odorless gas almost as deadly as phosgene. It was pumped in under pressure, and late last night someone turned the thumb-screw while we were asleep, let the gas escape, and—”
“Nuts!” he interrupted with a shake of his head. “No one would be such a fool. It’d get him, too—”
“Yes?” I broke in sarcastically. “Think so, do you?” Rolling the dead man over to get a grip beneath his arms I had discovered something he was lying on. A small, compact, but perfect gas mask.
“Well—I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!” he declared as I held my find up. “I sure will. But how’d it happen he was the only one to get it in the neck, when he was all prepared—”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out, or what a board of inquiry will determine,” I replied. “Help me get him into that compartment, then we’ll see about first aid for these—”
“Here, what goes on?” Weinberg sat up suddenly and stared about him like a man emerging from a bad dream. “What’re you guys up to?”
“How d’ye feel?” I countered.
“Terrible, now you mention it. My head is aching like nobody’s business, but”—he bent and touched the supine dead man, then straightened with a groan as he pressed hands against his throbbing temples—“what’s all this? Did his Nibs pass out, or—”
“Clear out,” I assured him. “He’s dead as mutton, and the rest of us came near joining him. Look after ’em a moment, will you? I’ll be right back.”
* * * *
Fresh air and copious draughts of cognac, followed by black coffee and more brandy, had revived the gas victims when I returned. Amberson was still too weak to stand, apKern complained of dizziness and clouded vision, but Weinberg, tough and wiry as a terrier, seemed none the worse for his close call. Due to her seat beside the window, Miss Watrous seemed less seriously affected than the rest. In half an hour she was ministering to apKern and Amberson, and they were loving it.
“Look here, Carmichael,” Weinberg said as we bent above the dead man while Amberson went through his papers, “this is no case of CO poisoning.”
“If it isn’t, I never used a pulmotor on a would-be suicide in South Philly,” I rejoined. “Why, there’s every indication of—”
“Of your granddad’s Sunday-go-to-meetin’ hat!” he broke in. “Take a look, Professor.”
Obediently, I bent and looked where he was pointing. “Well, I’ll be—” I began, and he grinned at me, wrinkling up his nose and drawing back his lips till almost all his teeth showed at the same time.
“You sure will,” he agreed, “but not until you’ve told me what you make of it.”
“Why, the man was throttled!” I exclaimed.
There was no doubting it. Upon the dead man’s throat were five distinct livid patches, one, some three inches in size, roughly square, the other four extending in broken parallel lines almost completely around the neck.
“What d’ye make of it?” he insisted.
I shook my head. “Possibly the bruise left by some sort of garotte,” I hazarded. “The neck’s broken and the hyoid bone is fractured; dreadful pressure must have been exerted, and with great suddenness. That argues against manual assault. Besides, no human hand is big enough to reach clear round his neck—he must have worn a sixteen collar—and even if it were, there isn’t any thumb mark here.”
He nodded gloomily, almost sullenly. “You said it. Know what it reminds me of?”
“I’ll bite.”
“Something I saw when I was hoppin’ ambulances at Bellevue. Circus was playin’ the Garden, and a roustabout got in a tangle with one of the big apes. It throttled him.”
“So?” I raised my brows. “Where’s the connection?”
“Right here. These livid patches on this feller and the ones on that poor cuss we took down to the morgue are just alike. Charlie Norris had us all down to the mortuary when he performed the autopsy on that circus man and showed us the characteristic marks of an ape’s hand contrasted with a man’s. He was particular to point out how a man grasps something using his thumb as a fulcrum, while the great apes, with the exception of the chimpanzee, make no use of the thumb, but use the fingers only in their grasp. Look here—” he pointed to the large square livid mark—“this would be the bruise left by the heel of the hand, and these—” he indicated the long, circling lines about the dead man’s neck—“would be the finger-marks. That’s just the way the bruises showed on that man at the Bellevue Morgue.”
“Snap out of it!” I almost shook him in my irritation. “Here’s one time when observed phenomena don’t amount to proof. It seemed fantastic enough to find a cylinder of concentrated carbon monoxide in the car, with you chaps and Miss Watrous almost dead of CO poisoning, but to lug in a gorilla or orangutan to throttle our would-be murderer before he had a chance to slip his gas mask on—Poe never thought up anything as wild as that.”
“Okay, have it your own way,” he grumbled, “but—”
A grunt from Amberson deflected our attention from the corpse.
“Take a look at this, you fellers,” he commanded, holding out the sheaf of papers he had taken from the inside pocket of the dead man’s blouse. “Ever see a finer set-up?”
The first paper was a pass from G-2 declaring the bearer might circulate where he chose inside our lines in uniform or plain clothes; he was not to be delayed; all railroad transportation officers were directed to give him every preference. Intelligence work. The next identified him as Captain Albert Parker Tuckerman, infantry unassigned, on leave with special permission to visit the Paris area. Next were travel orders to Brest, Saint-Nazaire, Treves, Coblenz—each issued in a different name. Last, but far from least, was a complete