“I guess that’s all,” said Goldberger, after a moment.  “Send in Mr. Vantine, please.”

Parks went out, and Vantine came in a moment later.  He corroborated exactly the story told by Parks and myself, but he added one detail.

“Here is the man’s card,” he said, and held out a square of pasteboard.

Goldberger took the card, glanced at it, and passed it on to Simmonds.

“That don’t tell us much,” said the latter, and gave the card to Godfrey.  I looked over his shoulder and saw that it contained a single engraved line: 

     M. Theophile D’AURELLE

“Except that he’s French, as Parks suggested,” said Godfrey.  “That’s evident, too, from the cut of his clothes.”

“Yes, and from the cut of his hair,” added Goldberger.  “You say you didn’t know him, Mr. Vantine?”

“I never before saw him, to my knowledge,” answered Vantine.  “The name is wholly unknown to me.”

“Well,” said Goldberger, taking possession of the card again and slipping it into his pocket, “suppose we lift him onto that couch by the window and take a look through his clothes.”

The man was slightly built, so that Simmonds and Goldberger raised the body between them without difficulty and placed it on the couch.  I saw Godfrey’s eyes searching the carpet.

“What I should like to know,” he said, after a moment, “is this:  if this fellow took poison, what did he take it out of?  Where’s the paper, or bottle, or whatever it was?”

“Maybe it’s in his hand,” suggested Simmonds, and lifted the right hand, which hung trailing over the side of the couch.

Then, as he raised it into the light, a sharp cry burst from him.

“Look here,” he said, and held the hand so that we all could see.

It was swollen and darkly discoloured.

“See there,” said Simmonds, “something bit him,” and he pointed to two deep incisions on the back of the hand, just above the knuckles, from which a few drops of blood had oozed and dried.

With a little exclamation of surprise and excitement, Godfrey bent for an instant above the injured hand.  Then he turned and looked at us.

“This man didn’t take poison,” he said, in a low voice.  “He was killed!”

CHAPTER III

THE WOUNDED HAND

“He was killed!” repeated Godfrey, with conviction; and, at the words, we drew together a little, with a shiver of repulsion.  Death is awesome enough at any time; suicide adds to its horror; murder gives it the final touch.

So we all stood silent, staring as though fascinated at the hand which Simmonds held up to us; at those tiny wounds, encircled by discoloured flesh and with a sinister dash of clotted blood running away from them.  Then Goldberger, taking a deep breath, voiced the thought which had sprung into my own brain.

“Why, it looks like a snake-bite!” he said, his voice sharp with astonishment.