haste from the lid of a common cardboard box!




CHAPTER VIII

THE ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER'S THEORY


On the following morning Inspector Dunbar, having questioned Mrs.
M'Gregor respecting the car in which Mlle. Dorian had visited the
house and having elicited no other evidence than that it was "a fine
luxurious concern," the Inspector and Dr. Stuart prepared to set out
upon gruesome business. Mrs. M'Gregor was very favourably impressed
with the Inspector. "A grand, pairsonable body," she confided to
Stuart. "He'd look bonny in the kilt."

To an East-End mortuary the cab bore them, and they were led by a
constable in attendance to a stone-paved, ill-lighted apartment in
which a swathed form lay upon a long deal table. The spectacle
presented, when the covering was removed, was one to have shocked
less hardened nerves than those of Stuart and Dunbar; but the duties
of a police officer, like those of a medical man, not infrequently
necessitate such inspections. The two bent over the tragic flotsam of
the Thames unmoved and critical.

"H'm," said Stuart--"he's about the build, certainly. Hair iron-grey
and close cropped and he seems to have worn a beard. Now, let us see."