Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 231 by Maxwel l Grant

Author:Maxwel,l Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER XII. ENOUGH OF MYSTERY

THE dignified members of the Cobalt Club had lost all patience with Commissioner Weston. They had usually tolerated his practice of holding police investigations on the premises. But when he insisted on dragging in a corpse from the sidewalk and planting it in the middle of the foyer, things had gone too far.

The body, of course, was Felkin's, and Weston was so anxious to identify it that he waived the club rules as though they didn't exist. He made it worse by summoning other people - Inspector Cardona, for example, who didn't belong in the club, at all. He prolonged the matter, too, by sending for data that would fully identify the victim.

Then came the parley of the police surgeons, which added to the confusion. If the Cobalt Club hadn't included some noted physicians among its members, the governing board would probably have taken matters in hand and insisted that Weston transfer his base of operations to the morgue.

But Felkin's death was so unusual, that the doctor's couldn't help but show an interest.

The victim's death was due to strangulation, but no rope could have caused the marks on Felkin's neck.

As one physician put it, they were due to widespread pressure, evenly applied."

Felkin's pallor was another case in point. During the process of strangulation, the blood supply had been cut off from his head, never to return.

There was a curious twist to the dead man's neck, indicating that vertebrae were badly dislodged because of the continued pressure. Forming themselves into a jury, the physicians conferred, and delivered a unanimous verdict.

Felkin's death could only have been produced by a powerful snake of the constrictor type, very possibly a man-killing python from the African jungle!

At least, the verdict cleared the foyer of the Cobalt Club, though it didn't clear the mystery. Weston ordered the body shipped to the morgue, and the physicians disbanded.

Retiring to a remote nook, Weston took three persons along: Cranston, Cardona, and the cab driver who had delivered Felkin on the club's front stoop.

The cab driver wasn't any help.

He was a "coolie," who hung around the ferry slips on a twenty-hour shift. He'd gone to sleep with a pinochle deck in his hands, to be aroused by someone telling him to hurry to the Cobalt Club. He hadn't

even looked at his passenger until he reached the destination.

The cabby's story indicated that men responsible for Felkin's death had placed the body in the cab and given the order themselves. So Felkin was dead before he began his last ride, and the present problem was to find somebody who owned a python.

Weston dismissed the cab driver, after taking his name and address. Then the commissioner asked for opinions. Cardona had one.

"That guy is a cluck," said the inspector, referring to the cab driver. "You could get more out of a monkey than out of him -"

Cardona halted, his swarthy face displaying the glow of his own inspiration.

"A monkey!" exclaimed Cardona. "That's an idea! There was a gorilla, or something like one, in that Annex that Stuggert runs.

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