The Deep Lake Mystery

“Anything at all. I think we can’t blink the fact that somebody came in here after the man was dead, and arranged all those weird decorations. Now maybe that somebody took away something as well.”

“That I don’t know,” Ames reiterated. “I know nothing of Tracy’s belongings.”

The man had been pleasant enough at first, but now he was resuming his irritable manner, and I wondered if he would get really angry.

Keeley Moore was saying almost nothing. But I knew he was losing no points of what was happening, and I rather expected him to break out soon. He did.

“Perhaps, Doctor Hart,” he said, quietly, “it might be a good idea to get Mr. Tracy’s manservant or housekeeper up here, and find out a little more about the appointments of this room. For instance, whether the orange and crackers were already here, or whether the mysterious visitor brought them.”

“I was just about to do that, Mr. Moore,” the Coroner said, with such haste that I had my doubts of his veracity.

But he rang a bell in the wall, and we waited for a response.

The butler himself answered it, a rather grandiose personage in the throes of excitement and grief at the terrible happenings to his master.

“Well, Griscom,” Ames said, with his habitual frown, “these gentlemen want to ask you some questions. Answer them as fully as you can.”

“Was it Mr. Tracy’s habit to have a bit of fruit or a cracker in his room at night?” the Coroner inquired.

“Yes, sir,” said the butler, and the sound of his own voice seemed to steady him. “He always had an orange or a few grapes and a cracker or two on the table by his bed, sir.”

“And do you think this orange and these crackers are the ones put out for him last night?”

“I’m sure of it, sir. I put them out myself.”

“Then where is the plate? Surely you had them on a plate.”

“Of course, sir. They were on a small gilt-edged plate. I don’t see it about.”

“No, I don’t either. Had Mr. Tracy a valet?”

“No, sir, he didn’t like a man fussing about. I attended him, sir, and a footman helped me out now and then; and Mrs. Fenn, she’s cook and housekeeper, sir, she looked after his clothes, saving what I did myself.”

“Have you any reason to think your master would take his own life?”

“Oh, Lord, no, sir. Begging your pardon, but he was very fond of life, was Mr. Tracy. I thought he died of a fit, sir.”

“Probably he did. A fit or stroke of apoplexy. I begin to think, Inspector, we have no murder mystery on our hands after all.”

“No,” said Farrell, shaking his head, “apparently not.”

“Apparently yes,” said Keeley Moore, quietly. He had been looking at the dead man, and though he had not moved, but had stood for a long time, with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the still figure on the bed, I knew, somehow, that he had made a discovery.

“Stand over here, please, Inspector,” he said, in his calm, matter-of-fact way.

Farrell went and stood beside him, and Moore pointed to a very small circular object that shone like silver, though nearly hidden by the thick and rather long hair of Sampson Tracy.

It was the head of a nail that had been driven into the man’s skull.

CHAPTER IV

THE NAIL

“My God!” Farrell exclaimed, stepping closer and pushing aside the gray hair, thus clearly revealing the awful truth.

A flat-headed nail, the head rather more than a quarter of an inch in diameter, had been driven into the skull with such force that it showed merely as a metal disk. Having been hidden by the dead man’s hair, it had remained unnoticed until Moore’s quick eyes espied it.

Farrell picked at it a little, but it was far too firmly fastened to be moved by his fingers.

“What shall we do?” the Inspector asked, helplessly. “Shall we try to get Doctor Rogers back?”

“No,” returned the Coroner, “he’s just starting on a long trip. Let him go. He could do nothing and it would be a pity to spoil his journey. His diagnosis of apoplexy was most natural in the circumstances, for the symptoms are the same. I, too, thought death was the result of an apoplectic stroke. But now we know it is black murder, the case comes directly within my jurisdiction, and there’s no occasion to recall Doctor Rogers.”

“You’re right,” Ames assented, “but who could have done this fearful thing? I can hardly believe a human being capable of such a horror! Mr. Moore, you simply must take up this case. It ought to be a problem after your own heart.”

Every word the man uttered made me dislike him more. To refer to this terrible tragedy as a problem after Moore’s own heart seemed to me to indicate a mind callous and almost ghoulish in its type.

I knew Kee well enough to feel sure that he would investigate the murder, but not at the behest of Harper Ames.

He only acknowledged Ames’s speech by a noncommittal nod and turned to Detective March.

“We have our work cut out for us,” he said, very gravely. “I have never seen a stranger case. The murderer must have been a man of brute passions and brute strength. That nail is almost imbedded in the bone, and, I fancy, needed more than one blow of the hammer that drove it in. But first, as to the doors and windows. You tell me they were locked this morning?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Griscom, the butler, as Moore looked at him.

He was a smallish man, bald and with what are sometimes called pop-eyes. He stared in a frightened manner, but he controlled his voice as he went on to tell his story.

“Yes, sir, I brought the master’s tea at nine o’clock, as always. The door was locked – ”

“Is it usually locked in the morning?” Moore interrupted.

“Sometimes, not always. When it is locked, I knock and Mr. Tracy would get up and open the door. If unlocked, I walked right in.”

“And this morning it was locked, and the key in the lock on the inside?”

“Yes, sir. So I knocked, but when there was no answer, I got scared – ”

“Why were you scared?”

“Because Doctor Rogers had often told me that Mr. Tracy was in danger of an apoplectic stroke, and that I must do anything I could to make him eat less and take more exercise. I’ve been with the master a long time, sir, and I had the privilege of a bit of talk with him now and then. So I did try to persuade him to obey the doctor’s orders, and he would laugh and promise to do so. But he forgot it as soon as he saw some dish he was fond of, and he’d eat his fill of it.”

“Go on, Griscom,” Moore said, “what happened next?”

“I went to Mr. Everett – ”

“Yes, he went to Everett,” broke in the aggrieved voice of Harper Ames. “Why did he do that, instead of coming to me, I’d like to know!”

“Go on,” Moore instructed the butler.