The Diamond Cross Mystery Part 4

"No. There wasn't any use in that. She's deaf."

"And you didn't call the janitor?"

"No. I wasn't very wide awake, and I didn't really attach any importance to it until after I saw her--dead."

"Um! Yes," murmured Carroll. "Well, then you went to sleep again.

What did you do next?"

"I awakened with a sudden start just before six o'clock. I had not set an alarm, though I wanted to get up early to do a little repair job I had promised for early this morning. But I have gotten so in the habit of rousing at almost any hour I mentally set for myself the night before, that I don't need an alarm clock. I had fixed my mind on the fact that I wanted to get up at five-thirty, and I think it was just a quarter to six when I got up. I was anxious to finish the repair job for a man who was to leave on an early train this morning. He may be in any time now, and I haven't it ready for him."

"What sort of a repair job?" asked Carroll.

"On a watch."

"Where's the watch now?" and the detective flicked the ashes from a cigar the reporter had given him. Daley was down in the jewelry store, interviewing the clerks while Darcy was on the grill up above.

"The watch," murmured Darcy. "It--it's in her hand," and he nodded in the direction of the silent figure downstairs.

"The watch that is still ticking?"

"Yes, but the funny part of it is that the watch wasn't going last night, when I planned to start work on it. I forget just why I didn't do it," and Darcy seemed a bit confused, a point not lost sight of by Carroll. "I guess it must have been because I couldn't see well with the electric light on my work table," went on the jewelry worker.

"I've got to get that fixed. Anyhow I didn't do anything to the Indian's watch more than look at it, and I made up my mind to rise early and hurry it through. So I didn't even wind it. I can't understand what makes it go, unless some one got in and wound it--and they wouldn't do that."

"Whose watch is it?" asked Thong.

"It belongs to Singa Phut."

"Singa Phut!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Carroll. "Crimps, what a name! Who belongs to it?"

"Singa Phut is an East Indian," explained Darcy. "He has a curio store down on Water Street. We have bought some odd things from him for our customers, queer bead necklaces and the like. He left the watch with my cousin, who told me to repair it. It needed a new case-spring and some of the screws were loose."

"How did Mrs. Darcy come to have the watch in her hand?" Carroll demanded.

"That I couldn't say."

"What sort of a man is this Indian--Singa--Singa--" began Thong, hesitatingly.

"Singa Phut is a quiet, studious Indian," answered Darcy. "He has not lived here very long, but I knew him in New York. He has done business with me for some years."

"Is he all right--safe--not one of them gars--you know, the fellows that use a silk cord to strangle you with?" asked Thong, who had some imagination regarding garroters.

"Not at all like that," said Darcy, and there was the trace of a smile on his face. "He is a gentleman."

"Oh," said Carroll and Thong in unison.

There came another knock on the side door downstairs. There was less of a crowd about now, and Mulligan did not have to keep back a rush as he opened the portal.

"Dr. Warren," reported the policeman, calling upstairs to Carroll and Thong.

"The county physician," explained Carroll. "Better come down and meet him, Mr. Darcy. He'll want to ask you some questions. Then we'll have another go at you. Got to ask a lot of questions in a case like this,"

he half apologized.

"Oh, sure," a.s.sented the jewelry worker.

"Doc Warren, eh," mused Thong to his partner, as Darcy preceded them downstairs. "Now we'll know what killed her, and we'll have something to start on--maybe."

"I think we've got something already," observed Carroll.

"Oh, yes--maybe--and then--again--maybe _not_. Come on!"

"Morning boys! Nice crisp day--if you say it quick!" cried the county physician, as he shook the rain from his coat and tossed his auto gloves on a shiny gla.s.s showcase. "Second time this week you've got me out of bed before my time. What's the matter, if they've got to have a murder, with doing it in the afternoon? I like my sleep!"

He was smiling and cheerful, was Dr. Warren. Murders and autopsies were all in the day's work with him. He had been county physician for a number of years.

"Hum, yes! quite an old lady," he mused as he took off his coat, which Carroll held for him. The doctor rolled up his shirt sleeves and stooped down. "Head's badly cut--let's see what we have here. Let's have a light, it's too dark to see."

One of the clerks switched on more electric lights, and they glinted and sparkled on the silver and cut gla.s.s. They flashed on the white, still face, and the gleams seemed to be swallowed up in that red blotch in the snowy hair.

"Um, yes! Depressed fracture. Bad place, too. Shouldn't wonder but what it had done the trick. Might have been from a black-jack?" and he glanced questioningly at the detectives.

Carroll shook his head in negation.

"That'll crack a skull, but it won't draw blood--not if it's used right," and he brought from his hip pocket one of the weapons in question--a short, stout flexible reed, covered with leather, the end forming a pocket in which was a chunk of lead.

"I'll gamble it wasn't one of _them_," said Carroll.

"Maybe not," a.s.sented the doctor. "Let's look a bit further."

He glanced at the floor about the body, peered around the edge of a showcase, underneath which there was a s.p.a.ce for refuse--odds and ends, discarded wrapping paper and the like--a place into which neither of the detectives had, as yet, glanced. Dr. Warren uttered an exclamation, and drew out a metal statue, about two feet high.

It was that of a hunter, standing as though he had just delivered a shot, and was peering to see the effect. The b.u.t.t of his gun projected behind him, and as Dr. Warren moved the statue into the light of the jewelry store chandeliers, they all saw, clinging to the stock of the gun, some straggling, white hairs.

"That's what did it!" exclaimed the county physician. "I'll wager, when I try, I can fit that gun b.u.t.t into the depression of the fracture. The burglar--or whoever it was--swung this statue as a club.

It would make a deadly one, using the foot end for a handle," and Dr.

Warren waved the ornament in the air over the dead woman's head to ill.u.s.trate what he meant.

"Don't!" muttered Darcy in a strained voice.

"Don't what?" asked the physician sharply.

"Use the statue that way."

"Why not?"

"Well--er--I--we were going to buy it for our new home. But now-- Oh, I never want to see it in the house! I couldn't bear to look at it--nor could she!"

"She? We? What do you mean?" asked Carroll quickly. "Say, do you know something about this killing that you're keeping back from us?"