Death Points A Finger Part 9

"No. We've got a man of all work who takes care of such things. He hasn't been in these rooms since last spring; he replaced that fan in the hole there." She pointed to the ventilator.

"How is it there is no screen on the window? There are mosquitoes around here, are there not?"

"Yes, sometimes. But Mr. Miller never opened the window, except at night sometimes, when there wasn't any light in the room and that only for a short time. You see, he was queer that way. He was afraid of being shot at."

"Did Mr. Morris have any revolvers, Mrs. Horsnall?"

"Yes, he had three or four."

"Is that one of them?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't know one from the other. I never touched them; I was afraid of them."

"And you are quite certain, Mrs. Horsnall, that no repairs were made in the rooms since last spring and that no one except you, the maid, Ella, and Mr. Miller himself were in these rooms since last spring?"

"I'm sure of that, sir."

"Will you send the maid, Ella, up here, Mrs. Horsnall, and, thank you."

Ella, a sulky young woman of Irish extraction, came and verified everything Mrs. Horsnall had said. Professor Brierly took her over practically the same ground as he had the older woman.

Professor Brierly dismissed her and went back to the window, which he submitted once more to a careful scrutiny. He absently picked at the outer edges of the panes with his fingers. He turned to Detective Brasher, saying, apologetically:

"I came up to this beautiful country for a rest and a vacation; I did not think I should have any need for any revolvers. Can you tell me where I can get one like this and sh.e.l.ls like these?" He pointed to the table.

Brasher looked at him suspiciously.

"Sure, Professor, you can get them at Hinkle's sporting goods store, in town. Hinkle carries everything, but," belligerently, "what about your sayin' that Miller didn't kill himself?"

"If you mean by 'killing himself,' that he committed suicide, I can safely say, even now, with the incomplete information I have, that he did not kill himself. There is a possibility that he was handling the weapon and accidentally discharged it. But the surrounding circ.u.mstances make that highly improbable."

He paused for a moment and asked, abruptly: "Is there any objection to my looking about the grounds?"

"None at all, Professor, but do you mind telling me what you want a gun like this for?"

"Certainly not. I should like to make some tests with it."

"Professor, I've heard a lot about you. I'd like to work with you.

I'm a rough neck, a man without education, just a hard working detective, but I do the best I can. I'd like to--"

Brasher paused, floundered and reddened. There was a soft gleam in the deeply sunken bright blue eyes of the old scientist. He nodded.

"Of course, I'll be happy to have your help. I will just look about--"

"I'll go with you, Professor, and there's no reason why you can't have this gun, if it will help you."

"That will be fine, Mr. Brasher. It is just the thing I need." He waited while the weapon and the sh.e.l.ls were wrapped in a paper.

Matthews took the parcel and the five men went outside.

Chapter VI

Professor Brierly nodded with satisfaction when he looked up at the rear facade of Miller's Folly. Near the edge of the roof, was a chimney. A plumb line dropped from the center of the chimney would drop about three feet to the right of the only window in the blank, forbidding wall.

"I see," commented the old man, "a chimney. I did not know." He turned to Brasher. "You offered to help, young man; here is your chance. At the rear of the chimney, near its base, particularly the two rear angles, you will find fresh marks. The chimney is probably scuffed as though a rope had been drawn tightly about it and pulled back and forth. You will find the edges of the roof, coincident with the sides of the chimney, also scuffed as though a rope had been pulled across the edge with quite a weight at its end. You--"

Brasher did not hear the end. He was racing around the side of the building. In a short time they saw his figure on the edge of the roof clinging to the chimney. Then he crawled to the edge and leaning far forward, he gazed intently at something that the men below could not see.

Brasher looked down and nodded his head so violently that he nearly threw himself from the roof. He came racing around the side of the house in a short time.

"You're right, Professor; it's just like you said. I begin to see--"

Professor Brierly was pointing at a spot on the wall about three feet from the ground. There was a scar in the cement joining the stones. The scar was a small hole about large enough to hold a man's small finger. The scar ran obliquely from above, downward and inward.

Professor Brierly was saying:

"There are a number of these scars running up in a staggered arrangement, one above the other, about a foot apart, literally. I saw some of these scars from the window above and one especially deep one. It is fairly obvious--"

"I get you, Professor, I get you. You think--"

Professor Brierly shook his head.

"I shall tell you definitely what I think when I have made the tests with the revolver. Can we get sh.e.l.ls like these at Hinkle's?

I shall need some more."

Professor Brierly chose to keep his own counsel on the way to Lentone and thence to their camp on the lake. Arrived there, he did not waste much time. Taking a number of sheets of paper, he shot at them from varying distances with the revolver found in Miller's room. Beginning by holding the muzzle an inch from the cards, he gradually increased the distance inch by inch until he was shooting from a distance of twelve inches. Then he shot from a distance of fifteen, twenty, twenty-five and thirty inches.

He now turned to the men who had been watching him.

"I can now say definitely that Mr. Miller was shot with the muzzle somewhere between twelve and fifteen inches from his temple. I still do not understand why the killer approached so close without--"

"Morris Miller was almost stone deaf," interrupted Brasher.

"Ah, that accounts for it; that clears up something that puzzled me."

"Since you three have conspired to make me take an interest in crime," his glance swept Jimmy, Matthews, and McCall, "I have gone rather exhaustively into matters that hitherto only interested me casually. I spent two months in the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory of Northwestern University. Among the subjects I took up were powder marks.

"It was obvious to me at the first glance at the wound that it was not self-inflicted. I felt reasonably certain that the weapon was held a greater distance from the head than it would be held if the victim contemplated suicide. That is why I suggested the possibility that he had held the weapon and it had gone off by accident. That seemed a remote possibility, but still a possibility.

"Powder marks tell quite an interesting story to the student.

Black powder will not leave the same marks at the same distance, either in kind or degree, as will smokeless powder. The same kind of powder fired from a weapon with a short barrel will leave burns that differ radically from those fired from a long barrel. The amount of powder also will make a difference.

"Black powder is merely a physical mixture of three ingredients.

The charcoal which goes into its composition is not burned at the time of firing and remains unchanged. Each little unburned charcoal grain becomes a secondary projectile, which leaves its mark not only on the surface that received the bullet if it is close enough, but also makes little pits on the base of the bullet.

"Smokeless or semi-smokeless powder is a chemical compound in which the ingredients are radically changed in form. At the time of firing, smokeless powder is practically all burned and only gases are left, leaving neither soot nor pits on, the base of the bullet. Smokeless powders will also leave burns on the surface at which the bullet is fired, but neither as black, nor deep, nor as numerous as those left by black powder.

"Thus you see, given the same ammunition, the same weapon, it can be ascertained by tests, with a fair degree of accuracy, at what distance a shot was fired. The zone of black around the wound itself, the size of powder marks, the thinness with which they are scattered, all tell their story."