Death at the Excelsior | Page 2

a week ago, and I examined
him thoroughly. But sometimes you can be deceived. The inquest will
tell us." He eyed the body almost resentfully. "I can't understand it. The
man had no right to drop dead like this. He was a tough old sailor who
ought to have been good for another twenty years. If you want my
honest opinion--though I can't possibly be certain until after the
inquest--I should say he had been poisoned."
"How would he be poisoned?" asked Mrs. Pickett quietly.
"That's more than I can tell you. There's no glass about that he could
have drunk it from. He might have got it in capsule form. But why
should he have done it? He was always a pretty cheerful sort of old
man, wasn't he?"
"Yes, sir," said the Constable. "He had the name of being a joker in
these parts. Kind of sarcastic, they tell me, though he never tried it on
me."
"He must have died quite early last night," said the doctor. He turned to
Mrs. Pickett. "What's become of Captain Muller? If he shares this room
he ought to be able to tell us something about it."
"Captain Muller spent the night with some friends at Portsmouth," said
Mrs. Pickett. "He left right after supper, and hasn't returned."
The doctor stared thoughtfully about the room, frowning.
"I don't like it. I can't understand it. If this had happened in India I
should have said the man had died from some form of snakebite. I was
out there two years, and I've seen a hundred cases of it. The poor devils
all looked just like this. But the thing's ridiculous. How could a man be
bitten by a snake in a Southampton waterfront boarding-house? Was
the door locked when you found him, Mrs. Pickett?"
Mrs. Pickett nodded. "I opened it with my own key. I had been calling
to him and he didn't answer, so I guessed something was wrong."

The Constable spoke: "You ain't touched anything, ma'am? They're
always very particular about that. If the doctor's right, and there's been
anything up, that's the first thing they'll ask."
"Everything's just as I found it."
"What's that on the floor beside him?" the doctor asked.
"Only his harmonica. He liked to play it of an evening in his room. I've
had some complaints about it from some of the gentlemen, but I never
saw any harm, so long as he didn't play it too late."
"Seems as if he was playing it when--it happened," Constable Grogan
said. "That don't look much like suicide, sir."
"I didn't say it was suicide."
Grogan whistled. "You don't think----"
"I'm not thinking anything--until after the inquest. All I say is that it's
queer."
Another aspect of the matter seemed to strike the policeman. "I guess
this ain't going to do the Excelsior any good, ma'am," he said
sympathetically.
Mrs. Pickett shrugged her shoulders.
"I suppose I had better go and notify the coroner," said the doctor.
He went out, and after a momentary pause the policeman followed him.
Constable Grogan was not greatly troubled with nerves, but he felt a
decided desire to be somewhere where he could not see the dead man's
staring eyes.
Mrs. Pickett remained where she was, looking down at the still form on
the floor. Her face was expressionless, but inwardly she was tormented
and alarmed. It was the first time such a thing as this had happened at
the Excelsior, and, as Constable Grogan had hinted, it was not likely to
increase the attractiveness of the house in the eyes of possible boarders.
It was not the threatened pecuniary loss which was troubling her. As far
as money was concerned, she could have lived comfortably on her
savings, for she was richer than most of her friends supposed. It was the
blot on the escutcheon of the Excelsior--the stain on its
reputation--which was tormenting her.
The Excelsior was her life. Starting many years before, beyond the
memory of the oldest boarder, she had built up the model establishment,
the fame of which had been carried to every corner of the world. Men
spoke of it as a place where you were fed well, cleanly housed, and

where petty robbery was unknown.
Such was the chorus of praise that it is not likely that much harm could
come to the Excelsior from a single mysterious death but Mother
Pickett was not consoling herself with such reflections.
She looked at the dead man with pale, grim eyes. Out in the hallway the
doctor's voice further increased her despair. He was talking to the
police on the telephone, and she could distinctly hear his every word.
II
The offices of Mr. Paul Snyder's Detective Agency in New Oxford
Street had grown in the course of