“Now is it not true, Doctor, that if air is introduced into a large vein it may be carried in the venous circulation to the right ventricle, and be then forced by the systole of the latter into the pulmonary artery or its primary branches, acting like a clot, possibly even producing a clot?...”
“It is, Mr. Meroe. That would be what is termed an air embolism. It would have somewhat the same effect as phlebitis of a large vein...”
“And it would produce death?”
“It would.”
“And the face and surface of the victim would be ashy pale with the lips and mucous membrane a pale slate color, as was the case with the bodies in question?”
“Either that or the face would be livid and bluish, and in some cases the limbs are convulsed.”
“And there was nothing in your examination of these bodies with which you could contradict my statement that death was caused by the introduction of air into a large vein by means of an empty or partially empty hypodermic needle, thus leaving the marks which I discovered on examining the bodies this morning?”
“Nothing, Mr. Meroe. It is a thing which had not occurred to me before in relation to this particular case. It is only in exceptional cases that there are any distinctive signs to be found on physical examination.”
“And how long after the introduction of the air would death occur?”
“Death might take place in a very few moments, not due to mere asphyxia — but in some degree, at any rate, to syncope—”
“Now, with the doctor’s word in support of my theory,” said Meroe, turning to the others, “I advance the tentative hypothesis that Mr. and Mrs. Brentore were murdered deliberately by the malignant introduction of air into a large vein. Now, as this could not very well he accomplished without their consent, or without drugging them, or binding them, I suggest that it was accomplished upon the pretext of injecting a medicine applicable to an ailment from which they believed themselves to be suffering at the time.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“But could one die such a death, Mr. Meroe,” interrupted the rasping voice of Mr. Grover, “and remain in the natural sitting posture in which I saw them as early as yesterday afternoon, and in which Mr. Barhart found them this morning?”
“They could not,” answered Meroe; “and for that reason I was about to offer the additional suggestion that, after having been successfully murdered in this unusual way, the bodies were placed in a sitting posture as nearly natural as possible. And why? It would seem that one would not take the trouble to do this without a perfectly definite and undoubtedly ingeniously conceived purpose. It is this and one other point which have led me to some rather startling conclusions since seven o’clock this morning. There is in this room, at this moment, one who will verify all that I am saying.
“Did it not strike you as suggestive that the lady across the hall should have seen Dr. Kramer enter this room and the janitor depart from it? I leave you to draw your own conclusions from this and the fact that when one disappears both disappear. And who would derive the greatest benefit from the death of Mr. and Mrs. Brentore? Would it not certainly be the nephew, Roderick Latimer, who disappeared from Brattlenook in the face of heavy debts? Who else would spend weeks of patient labor on a plan to hasten the preparation of the will and, immediately after that, the death of these people?
“At this point I offer as another suggestion that Roderick Latimer. Dr. Kramer and Lee Harmon, the janitor, are one and the same person—”
There was another burst of murmuring. There was a slightly sarcastic smile on the face of Larkin.
“—and that in the person of the janitor he was able to intercept the telegram the receipt of which would have ruined his chances of being named in the will, and that in the person of the doctor he was able to commit the murder at the proper time and without any great outcry.”
“Mr. Meroe,” said Larkin suddenly, “most of what you have given us, clever and coherent though it is, is mere theory. Have you proof of what you say? Can you lead us to the murderer?”
“If the case ended at that point I would not have proof of what I say. I would not be able to lead you to the murderer. But Roderick Latimer did not stop there. He went a step farther. He went a step too far. In an effort to protect himself without having to, flee the country entirely he had conceived a plan which was entirely too perfect for him to carry out without a flaw. He knew that the best way to escape detection and still be on the ground until such time as it was safe for him to resume the character of Roderick Latimer, pay his debts, and take up the life of a wealthy and righteous citizen — was to be right under the nose and on the side of the detector. This would have been very successful had he been the master-mind to think of all the details at once. He was not that perfect master-mind. And now, Lee Harmon, Dr. Kramer, Roderick Latimer and Henry Grover, what have you to say for yourself?”
IV
There was a general outcry of astonishment. Henry Grover looked about him and up at Meroe in utter amazement. There was another sarcastic smile on the face of Larkin.
“You would look more like yourself without that on,” said Meroe, reaching for the hair which grew out of the mole above Grover’s left eye, but it did not budge. Grover uttered an exclamation of pain and arose in indignation.
“Come out of it, Latimer,” said Meroe. “It will not help you now to put up a bluff. You came to me at six-thirty. You were in a hurry as you accosted the telephone girl at the Charles-gate Club. You were not in a hurry when once you had entered my room. You made your story entirely too dramatic to get away with it naturally. You described the woman as having slightly gray hair and a dark brown dress. It was when I found that her hair was really only slightly gray and that her dress was a very dark brown that I got the hunch about your whole game. I defy any man to sit in your room at the Buckminster and tell Mrs. Brentore’s dark brown dress from a black one while it is hanging over a chair in the center of this room. And it would be equally impossible to recognize her hair as slightly gray without having seen it at very close range. And when I found that the window of Kramer’s room at the Braymore opened onto the roof of the Buckminster not far from the stairway leading down to the sixth floor, your floor, I was convinced. Also you were too eager to retract your suggestion that a crime had been committed, after seeing the possibility of its being considered otherwise...”
“Now let’s see whether that mole will not come off. It doesn’t look quite natural to me. Your ideas of disguise are a bit crude for this day and age. I wish I had seen you as Dr. Kramer and the janitor...”
Grover had backed away from Meroe. Suddenly the coroner reached up for the mole. Grover jerked away with another exclamation, but the mole was left behind, held up to view in the coroner’s fingers.
“Do you deny anything that I have said?” asked Meroe, “Do you deny that you kept a room at both the Braymore and the Buckminster and managed to keep up the appearance of living in both of them by means of the stairway in the roof? Do you deny that for the past month you have worked yourself to death as Lee Harmon, janitor of the Claridge, in order to be the more certain of success in your little plan?”
I felt a real tinge of pity for the man as he hung his head. Suddenly he looked up.
“Perhaps it would help clear matters,” he said in a strained, but quiet voice, “if I showed you just exactly what was done in the case, for instance, of the woman.”
He reached in his hip pocket and drew forth a little box. He removed from it a hypodermic needle.