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“The skin has stretched away all its natural markings,” he said without turning round. “No, it's here we'll find a reference, if anywhere.”

Curiosity overcame my disgust. I bent over his shoulder and peered into the dead man's mouth, opened now just the way a strangled rat's will gape. No, there was no dental plate or bridgework or indeed anything but a few noncommittal fillings and a gap or two where a few of the middle teeth had been lost.

“Nothing to report,” I said, glad to have joined in the inspection and not to have winced. Now, at last, we could go.

But a last and worst shock was in store for me. Just as I thought we could leave this wretched shred of mortality under its rearranged pebbles, for some official to take or leave, I saw Mr. Mycroft, instead of putting it down, shift his hold. His left hand forced the mouth to open still wider until the horrid thing seemed laughing at us. Then quickly his right hand darted into the mouth. There was a sort of tussle which was one of the most nauseatingly ludicrous things I have ever seen—a ghastly sort of Punch and Judy act—as the thing wobbled and struggled and Mr. Mycroft wrestled and hung on. At last there was a tearing sound which really nearly made me sick. Mr. Mycroft let the corpse fall on the ground and slipped something into his pocket.

I was so upset that when he said, “That is all we can do now. Help me, while I cover this over again with the pebbles,” that I hastily joined in scattering shingle over the withered thing (the waving arm, I'm glad to say, Mr. Mycroft made rest by putting the body face down) and followed him dumbly as we turned back toward our base.

I think Mr. Mycroft knew I was shocked, but perhaps he was just indifferent to what I felt. Perhaps he was completely absorbed in his puzzle, treating that horrid object with the detachment I should treat such a word as
cadaverine
, for instance, if I knew that it was really a code-concealer. I should be quite indifferent to the fact that that word stands for one of the most terrible of stenches, and so I suppose Mr. Mycroft regarded what we had found as just so much evidential material. I was tired and really exhausted by the time we reached our base. He, with his easy reserve of energy, poured out cold coffee from the flask and offered me cigarettes though, I noticed, he did not smoke.

“Kerson won't be here for another couple of hours. I didn't expect we'd net such a fish in our first cast. It made going farther not worth while, at present.” He sat back and now was evidently enjoying the austere scenery with complete appreciation. There was nothing else to do and, with his usual power of attention, he did it.

At last, as the pools of blue shadow began to fill up the shallow fawn-colored cups of the lake-beds, we heard the motor's purr in the distance. Before night fell we were back in the cave camp.

Chapter IV

Again I slept heavily, waking to find Mr. Mycroft and Kerson already bundling up all our goods. “Are we off?” was my natural but not very detectional remark. I own I woke in that mood which my nurse used to call getting out of the wrong side of the bed—though the “bed” I had slept on, the broad ledge round the edge of the cave wall, had of course only one side for alighting and I had slept well enough. It was the strain of yesterday. I wasn't fit to trail treasure with corpses as ambiguous signposts. I should stick to cross-word puzzles. Yet, with natural perversity, when Mr. Mycroft said, “Yes, we're going back,” that too offended me.

“Back when we've found nothing!” Then I paused. While we drove back the evening before nothing had been said to Kerson about our find. It was hardly to be called a treasure, but it was certainly a discovery. Had Mr. Mycroft told the trader? Caution did not overcome my irritation, but it switched it to more open issues. “Without breakfast?” I queried in a challenging tone. I was hungry and needed food. Yesterday had been very heavy going for me. Kerson looked round in an offensive way. I knew he thought I was a tenderfoot or greenhorn or whatever barbarous term he would use for a nature more sensitive than his own.

Without turning from his baggage wrapping Mr. Mycroft said, “If we are to catch the late afternoon train we have time if we start in the next ten minutes. It does not stop where we got off coming up.”

I bundled myself out and pulled on my outer clothes. I had slept the last two nights in my underthings. I hate doing this, indeed, had hardly ever before in my life done such a thing. And now there wouldn't be time even to shave. My mood was, then, hardly communicative when we climbed into the car. I would not, even to satisfy my curiosity, ask why all the luggage was not on board. For a moment I cherished the unfriendly hope—so vexed had I become by all these repeated scratches—that they had forgotten part of their stuff (a silly illusion, as far as Mr. Mycroft was concerned). But in any case I was not going to unbend. I felt stiff with unfriendliness and the futility of our desert escapade. I wanted to be free of the whole thing and back in my own neat office with my neat work neatly served by my neat secretary. Nor did the long drive in the blinding glare of heat supple my mood. It grew more crusted. Under the high sun all color and relief went out of the interminable landscape. It was simply a tumbledown furnace—everything crumbled away by repeated calcining. How could I have ever found anything beautiful in it at any time of the day! Mr. Mycroft read my mood and in silence handed me some cold coffee—of course it spilled as we jerked over some stones. I swallowed a little, but the rest dribbled onto my clothes, staining them. The next offering—a sandwich of stale bread with pieces of perspiring cheese as the middle term—after a nibble, it so disgusted me that I frankly threw it out of the car. One of those poor little infested rodents could have one last good meal!

I spent the next few hours expecting we should miss the train and the hour after that—for we did arrive in ample time and the train was forty-five minutes late—in wishing we had not jolted along without more than five minutes' pause in the whole run. Certainly, my temper had deteriorated through the day and, disobeying the Proverbial advice, I let the sun go down—which it did when we had settled ourselves for some time in silence in the soot-covered train—on my wrath. We had no sleepers engaged. We jostled on through the night. When the dawn and the city appeared together I had made a resolve—no more desert detection for me!

I gathered my last stale, desiccated crust of courtesy and said to Mr. Mycroft as we stood together on the platform, “Thank you for a remarkable trip. I think, though, you realize now that I am hardly cut out for real life-and-death detection. I am glad to have been of use in setting you on your way and I am sure that you will not need my small services any further.”

As usual, nothing that I could say seemed really to penetrate down to his full attention. It was as though it were dealt with by some automatic secretary, while the chief himself was never even told that you had called.

“Perhaps not, perhaps not. But one can't be sure, can one? It's a peculiarly rich case already and a number of apparently side issues may come in again.”

I don't think he was thinking of me, but still, even by allusion, I don't like to be referred to as a side issue. After all, everyone must be central to himself. Indeed, I thought of saying something more, just not to be brushed aside like a ticked-off shopping list. But already the old bird had turned, called a red-cap, and was collecting his things. I called another, as my only possible reply, and our respective bearers led us off, the crowd separating us.

After a quiet day in which I cleaned myself up and felt supple and smooth again, shaved, washed, properly fed and slept, the morning after I was at my office. My secretary had quite a large amount of interesting work for me to look over. There was a number of new inquiries. The next few weeks I was perfectly happy. This, I said to myself, is my right life—interested but not involved—unraveling riddles, as it were, in a riddle laboratory, but not like a silly, excitable terrier rushing down rabbit holes and getting oneself stuck fast at the bottom of one of them.

After a month I felt I had, for the moment, everything in perfect running order. So one day, when I had signed all my letters and seen my last inquirer, I looked at my watch and it was still only three-fifty. “I'll go,” I thought, “and ask Miss Brown. There are two cases I'd like to ask her whether it wouldn't be worth her while giving a sitting to. And anyhow, I haven't seen her for an age.” I hadn't any doubt that my reading of those two riddles which I was taking over to her, had been right, but I knew she would appreciate my talking them over with her and she had a very nice way of appreciating my hunches—an approval which did, I knew, make them work better. There's nothing like encouragement for the subconscious. A telephone call told me that she was at home and also had no more appointments for that day.

After a cordial greeting, when we were comfortably settled over tea and she had approved my two interpretations and said that she did not think that a sitting with her “control” would help any further my clients, I asked her about her work.

“Oh, the usual thing: 77 percent wanting evidence that Aunt, Uncle, Ma or Pa, Hubby or Wifey is ‘happy, oh, so happy, over there.' Well, it may be as they wish. I don't know, as I'm not here when they are trying to use my subconscious as a long, long-distance line or super-world radio-beam. Then there's the lost luggage department—‘Where's the will, or the cache of notes or coin?'” She paused. “By the way, did you ever hear again of that queer little fellow whom you brought round when you were last here? He's been in my mind off and on. You know, I felt about him there was something more than met the eye. That's the worst,” she went on, “of being an honest medium. You miss all the fun. You're like a child who has to be sent out of the room as soon as its elders begin to exchange confidences.”

I wanted, anyhow, to talk about my adventure, now it was over and evidently safely closed. So I had little difficulty in persuading myself that I owed this kindness to a colleague.

When I had finished, Miss Brown, after a minute's silence, remarked, “That was an experience. And I have a hunch, for what it is worth, that this adventure isn't closed. I believe it won't close until you help close it with your colleague.”

“It's not my business. Whatever help an outsider could give, I gave … at least you and I,” I added.

“Well,” she said, without pressing a point which she saw that I wanted left alone, “well, wait and see. You have a better conscious-hunch mind than I. Maybe you're right and there's nothing more to turn up.”

But, though I didn't tell her so, that precisely was my feeling and not a very pleasant one. Anyhow, I had been rude to Mr. Mycroft and so didn't want to see him again; and my hunch was that behind my rudeness was, as usual, fear.

There is no doubt, though, that her words helped forward what followed. Perhaps it was three days—not more—after my tea with Miss Brown that my secretary said I was wanted on the phone—by Mr. Mycroft. I think that without Miss Brown's gentle urging I should have said, “Say I'm out and he can leave a message.” But as it was, I took the receiver.

“I should like your opinion,” said the familiar tones—and the simple formula worked, of course. I was, with a phrase, made ready to listen. “I should like your opinion on a very interesting result of our trip. I have something to show you which I believe will be of interest to you.”

He wanted me to go round to a place which he said he had rented. My cautious side could only say, “Well, better get it over.” Whatever my real reason, the fact remains that I went. As I might have expected, Mr. Mycroft had made himself very efficiently comfortable. He offered me tea; it was, of course, excellent; chatted genially about our trip as though we had parted with perfect agreeableness and then, remarking that he did not wish to waste my time, led me out of his sitting room to a small room behind it which he had fitted up as a laboratory.

“Here is the little matter on which I wanted your judgment,” he said, pointing to his microscope. I peered down it obediently. I saw in the lit field a white disk covered with concentric rings.

“It looks,” I ventured, “like a cross section of a tree trunk with the growth rings just showing.”

“A very good diagnosis,” replied the voice at my shoulder. “It would, though, be a very dwarfish tree at such a small diameter to show such a wealth of growth record, for there are far more lines there than with this magnification you can see. One moment, if you will let me.” He took my place at the eyepiece and twiddled some rib-edged screws at the side. “Now?” he questioned me back to look again. The lit field of vision showed a number of lines which covered all the space I could see. “The higher magnification shows the lines clearly and, moreover, you will see, it discloses that most of them are different.”

“One,” I replied, “is so different from the rest that it looks as though it were drawn by a clumsy, excited pencil. In contrast, the others are almost mechanically perfect.” I paused in my reporting, trying to think what record this could be. “Then there's almost as badly drawn a one up in the corner. What is this—is it a root or stem?”

“Yes, your observing is good. Now, with a little deduction, I believe you'd discover what it is you are looking at. But I don't want to waste your time and I do want your opinion on another specimen.”

The slides shifted under my field of vision and when it was clear again I saw the same pattern.

“You've put back the same slide by mistake,” I reported.

“No,” he replied, “that is a different one of a second specimen.”

“But I see exactly the same patterns of thin lines and the few illdrawn ones.”

“Thank you; that is what I hoped you'd report. Now may I tell you what that broadish ill-drawn curve is? It is a birthmark. And what appears in a corner of your vision, that's a serious illness at six and a half years.”