The Diamond Cross Mystery | Page 8

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!" ejaculated 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," assented 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 glass 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 glass. 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," assented 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 space for refuse--odds and ends, discarded wrapping paper and the like--a place into which neither of the