The Monkey God | Page 5

have," the coroner retorted with a twinkle in his eye. "Got two
state troopers to ride herd on 'em, and put 'em through their paces in
great shape. Gosh, they're one scared crowd! Everybody agrees Milsted
shot himself, but if I asked any one of 'em, 'Why did you kill him?' I'll
bet a dollar he'd break down and confess.

"Well"-- he turned to the body with a brisk, professional air-- "I wonder
why the old coot did kill himself?"
With the deftness of long practice, covering the repugnance he felt for
his task with a running fire of cynical comment, the young physician
examined the remains, noted the position of the wound, the pistol in the
dead hand and the posture of the body.
"Plain as a pike-staff," he announced, rising and dusting his trousers
knees. "Never saw an opener case of suicide in my life, but, as Bobbie
Burns would say,
Ê
"'One thing must still be greatly dark,
The reason why he did it.'"
Ê
"I shouldn't be too cock-sure it's suicide if I were you," Professor
Forrester replied.
"Eh? The devil you say!" Dr. Nesbit shot him a quick glance. "Why
not?"
"Look at that wound again."
"Thanks; I've already had a fine, grandstand view of it. Right through
the frontal bone, slick and clean as a whistle."
"But did you see any powder brand around it?" Forrester insisted.
"Remember, in the nature of things, Milsted couldn't have held that gun
more than a foot from his head, and at that distance, even with
smokeless powder, there would have been some burning of the tissues,
or at least a scarification of the skin from the powder gases."
"Hum; by the Lord Harry, Professor, you're right!" the young official
admitted. "I overlooked it. Still--"

"Try to take that pistol from his hand," the Professor persisted.
"He's certainly holding it," the coroner admitted as he rose after tugging
futilely at the weapon clasped in the dead man's fingers. " Rigor mortis
set in early--"
"Rigor fiddlesticks!" Forrester scoffed. "Feel his jaw and neck, man;
that's where the stiffening would begin, if it were rigor mortis. You'll
find those muscles still flaccid."
"RIGHT you are," Dr. Nesbit agreed as he prodded the dead man's
facial muscles with a practiced forefinger. "But how do you account for
his grasping that gun so--"
The Professor sighed in exasperation. "Did you ever hear of the
condition known as cadaveric spasm?" he asked sharply. "That's a
perfect example of it. You know, as a physician--or you ought to, if you
don't--that when death takes place suddenly, especially from injury to
the nervous system, as in this case, where the brain was pierced, the
body, or parts of it, notably the hands, become rigid almost
immediately. I remember once coming on the body of a poor chap
who'd been murdered in the Gobi desert. Some brigands had shot him
through the head from behind as he was in the act of eating a piece of
mutton, and, though his body had almost completely mummified when
we found him, he was still grasping the sheep bone as if it were a pole
of a galvanic battery."
"Right-o," the coroner gave a short, affirmative nod. "Absolutely right,
Professor. This man was shot through the brain, too, as you say. But
that's one of the surest indicia of suicide, you know. No murderer could
put that gun in his hand after killing him and make his fingers grasp it
as they do."
"Exactly," Forrester nodded in his turn. "But suppose that instead of
shooting himself, Milsted had drawn his gun to shoot at someone else,
and actually fired one shot before, or just as, the other potted him. What
then? Wouldn't we have just the conditions we find here?"

"Yes," Nesbit conceded, "but the facts don't match your theory. Only
one shot was heard, and all the testimony, with one exception, is to the
effect that there was nobody for Milsted to shoot at, even if there'd been
someone to shoot him."
"Right," Forrester replied, "and it's my ward, Miss Osterhaut, who says
Milsted fired toward the window just before he fell. I'd take her word
against a dozen of these scatter-brained young fools' testimony. She has
been brought up to observe things, and do it accurately."
"But--" "And here's something else for you to chew on," the Professor
continued, brushing aside the half-uttered protest--"look at these--"
Leading the way to the museum he opened the empty cabinet and
directed his companion's gaze to the faint marks on its floor.
"Recognize 'em?" he demanded.
"Can't say I do."
"Very well, then. I'll tell you. They're footprints. Somebody who had
been walking through the snow, before it was deep enough to cover the
ground completely, was standing in that cabinet today.