Two Bottles of Relish: The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories. Lord Dunsany
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words to him.
‘That’s what I came to see you about,’ said Ulton.
‘Well?’ said Linley.
‘Snake-bite,’ said Ulton.
‘Bit late in the year for snakes,’ I said. And neither of them paid any attention to me.
‘What kind of snake?’ Linley asked.
‘Russell’s viper,’ said Ulton.
Then they talked about that viper for a while, and there seemed something gorgon-like about it: it kills by coagulating the blood, by turning it solid. Luckily there are no such snakes going about in England.
‘Where was he bitten?’ was Linley’s next question.
‘They’d found no puncture when I came away,’ said the inspector. ‘But of course they’ll examine the body and find out that. We detained the last man that was in contact with him, a man called Ornut, who charged him pretty hard.’
‘Did you search him?’ asked Linley.
‘Yes,’ said the inspector. ‘But we found nothing incriminating on him.’
‘I fancy you’ll have to let him go.’
‘We did,’ the inspector answered. ‘But we have his address.’
And then the telephone rang, and I answered it, and it was someone asking for Inspector Ulton. I told him and he went to it.
‘They’ve found the puncture,’ said Ulton when he came back from the telephone. ‘It’s in the sole of the right foot.’
‘Must have worn thin soles,’ I said.
But Linley got the point at once.
‘That accounts for everything,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t get to the football-ground, with all those men you had there watching. But they got at his boots.’
‘You think that’s it?’ said the inspector.
‘It stands to reason,’ said Linley. ‘You couldn’t stab something through the sole of a football-boot. It must have been inside the sole.’
And Inspector Ulton agreed; and so it turned out; he went away to see. And that evening he came back again and told Linley what it was. They’d got a snake’s fang fixed in the sole of Holbuck’s boot, with a layer of something protecting the foot from the fang until the boot got thoroughly warm and the protecting layer melted; then the action of running would operate the fang. It was placed under the ball of the foot, where the boot bends most when you run. And there was another protection, a sort of safety-catch, like the catch you have on a shot-gun, which prevented the thing working at all while it was in place, but it could be pushed out of place by a good tap on the end of it, which ran under the toe of the boot. Kicking a football would do it, and evidently had done it; and the next time that Holbuck ran, after kicking the ball hard, the fang entered the sole of his foot, and was full of the venom with which Russell’s viper concludes his quarrels in India.
‘No clue to the man?’ said Linley.
‘Not yet,’ said the inspector. ‘We ’phoned to the Zoo, and no one’s got poison from any of the snakes there. It looks like somebody who has travelled in India. It’s not easy to trace poisons that are not got from a chemist, and that don’t have to be signed for.’
‘No,’ said Linley. ‘But we’ll get him the other way; over the other murder. The clues to that will be at the telephone exchange. You know the time of the murder. We want to know what houses, of those that have a view of the door of Piero’s, were using the telephone at that time; those that had a view of the door and a view of a man approaching it for some way, so as to give the murderer time to get everything ready.’
‘And what then?’ asked Ulton.
‘Easy enough then,’ said Linley. ‘Find out who they were talking to, and find out which of the people called up at that time from one of those houses had a wireless transmitting apparatus, of which there are not many in England.’
‘I see,’ said Ulton. ‘And you think it was set off by wireless.’
‘It must have been,’ said Linley.
‘And wireless could do that?’ Ulton asked.
‘Make a spark, or strike a match? Certainly,’ replied Linley. ‘Why, they can steer ships or aeroplanes by it.’
‘And where do you think the transmitter was?’ said Ulton.
‘Wherever the man was telephoning to,’ said Linley, ‘from the house that could see Piero’s door, and some way up the street by which Island was coming.’
‘We’ll get the telephone calls,’ was all that Ulton said, and soon after that he left.
‘A sending apparatus is a large thing, isn’t it?’ I said to Linley.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Not easy to hide it in London,’ I said. ‘So many people about.’
‘It won’t be easy when Ulton gets after it,’ was Linley’s comment on that.
The inspector came round next morning. ‘There was a telephone-call from one of those houses at the time of the murder,’ he said. ‘A man giving the name of Colquist, which can’t be traced, took rooms on the first floor of No. 29 saying he wanted an office. He took the rooms a week before the murder, and left them the evening of the day it took place. He said he was an agent for real estate. He had the telephone going just at the time of the murder, a long-distance call to Yorkshire.’
‘To Yorkshire!’ said Linley.
‘Yes,’ said the inspector.
‘After all,’ said Linley; ‘why not?’
‘Of course he’s disappeared now,’ said Ulton.
‘Has No. 29 a good view of the street by which Island came?’ Linley asked.
‘Yes,’ said the inspector, ‘he could have seen Island coming a long way, from the windows of the first floor.’
‘Then you’ll have to go to Yorkshire,’ said Linley.
‘To Yorkshire?’ said the inspector.
‘Yes,’ said Linley, ‘if that’s where the call was put through to from 29. What part of Yorkshire was it?’
‘Henby, a village among the moors,’ said Ulton.
‘Then that’s where the murder was done,’ said Linley.
For some while Ulton didn’t seem able to credit it. But Linley stuck to his point. ‘If there weren’t any wires,’ he said, ‘it was done by wireless. Chance couldn’t have done it. It does odd things when left to itself, but it won’t send off an explosion for a murderer at exactly the right second, after he has made all those preparations. Preparations like that scare chance away. No, it was done by wireless; and, if by wireless, why not from Yorkshire.’
‘Then we’ve only got to go to the house and find him,’ said Ulton a little doubtfully.
‘Yes,’ said Linley. ‘And you may as well find out who he is before you start. He’ll be someone that Mr Cambell, Inspector Island and Sergeant Holbuck all helped to put away where he was brooding over this revenge. And he was either comfortably off or his crime paid him well, financially I mean; for a transmitting apparatus is not bought for nothing. He shouldn’t be hard to trace.’
‘No,’ said the inspector. ‘That would be Septon, I should think.’
‘What was his crime?’ asked Linley.
‘Selling cocaine,’ said Ulton. ‘He peddled it on a very large scale round the wrong kind of houses. Mr Cambell found him out, and Island and Holbuck were both in it. He’d be out now. They had him at