Chapter XI: Whose Hand?

For a few seconds no one spoke, either to contradict or agree with Quinlan. And no one stirred or removed his gaze of stunned surprise and fascinated loathing from the severed arm, with its hand clenched and disfigured by so unsightly a scar.

Hart turned a sudden look upon Margot, a look of penetrating suspicion, that made Gene frown angrily, taking a step forward and holding firmly to Margot’s arm. Hart’s expression was easy to interpret, but it was such an unexpected turning of the tables that, for a second, she could not cope with it.

“May I inquire, Miss Anstruther, if this is a pleasant little practical joke you’ve staged for our benefit, with the obvious intention of keeping yourself in the limelight, or if it’s just the last act in a comedy you began a few nights ago, from the same motive?”

Margot’s face flamed with an intensity of anger she had not supposed herself capable of. Gene gave a low exclamation of indignant disgust, and made a threatening movement nearer to Hart. She drew him back and whispered to him to let her handle Hart. Her breath came short and fast, as she struggled for self-control. It was too outrageous of the detective, but why should she care what he thought or said? The facts, so far as they had gone, would prove themselves, and she felt thrillingly competent to handle the situation from this point to whatever climax might be lurking in mystery. The hot flow of blood receded from her face, leaving her calm and very cool, physically and mentally. She returned Hart’s exasperating stare with an expression as mild as it was compelling.

“Mr. Hart,” she began quietly, “it will probably be impossible, and certainly it’s quite unnecessary, for me to convince you of anything which you’ve made up your mind not to believe. To be quite frank, I honestly do not think that your opinion of me or of my motives will make any more difference in the conduct of this case, or its ultimate disposal, than your opinion makes a difference to me personally.”

Gene squeezed her arm in excited admiration for her spirit and her clever retort. The other men looked down at the floor, or at the ceiling or out of the window; anywhere but at Hart. He grew a little paler, and his mouth twisted with an ugly sneer. Then he seemed to think better of it, or sudden change came to his mood. His level look into her eyes was less antagonistic, and his manner conveyed more respect for the girl who stood so quietly regarding him.

“You still claim that every word you told Quinlan and Boyle that first night, and all you said subsequently to me, was absolutely true?”

“If my word is of any consequence to you, Mr. Hart, yes, I do still claim just that.”

“And you knew absolutely nothing about this trapdoor or what I found down in that hole?”

“Absolutely nothing, Mr. Hart.” Her quiet statement was more convincing than an oath.

“Well,--I’ll be damned!” Hart sounded quite sincere, and more mystified than Margot had ever hoped to have him admit, even tacitly.

“Gene, please go downstairs and ask Mrs. Bellew to come up here right away. And prepare her mind about--that--” she glanced toward what lay on the floor; “so she won’t get hysterical up here.”

Gene knew from the sudden darkening and widening of her eyes, that her keen brain had swiftly adjusted itself to the facts, had seized upon whatever was concrete, and was intent upon pursuing her deductions without loss of time. As he went quickly to the door, she turned again to Hart.

“Have you any explanation, Mr. Hart?”

Hart shrugged his thin shoulders, and stared down at the gruesome object.

“Not yet,” he said laconically. Then he added a little sulkily. “You’ve sprung a bit of mysterious dirty work on me, and you can’t expect me to hand out an explanation till I’ve followed up the clues.”

“Surely you regard this discovery as part of the investigation, don’t you? It isn’t a _new_ case.”

“It’s the first proof I’ve had that there’s anything you could call a case,” he said doggedly.

“Well, at least you’ll agree with me that sane persons in a strictly material world, couldn’t possibly conduct this case on the basis of its having any element of the supernatural.”

Little did Hart suspect that Margot was actually, at that moment, fighting the temptation to let precisely that element creep into her emotions if not into her reflections. To speak so scornfully to Hart of things supernatural, was the best way, she felt, to harden her own mental attitude.

“I’ve never said or thought that any such foolishness should be taken seriously for a minute.” Hart was certainly sanely balanced.

A low murmur from Shane Boyle focussed attention on him. He was crossing himself, his expression between ecstasy and despair. Margot exchanged a smile with Hart, then she said:

“You agree with Quinlan, don’t you, Mr. Hart, that that horrible arm down there belonged to the girl Stella Ball?”

“Good God! What next. I’d like to know!”

“It seems clear enough to me,” she pursued slowly. “In fact, that dead and mutilated thing is as eloquent as if it were a live thing talking to me.”

“So far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t mean a thing, except that a woman had her arm cut off.”

“How long ago, could you form any idea?”

Hart stooped and scrutinized the grim relic. He studied the interior of the recess in the flooring, as well as he could without putting his head down into it. He stood up finally and spoke with respect for Margot’s mystery, for the first time since he had come on the case.

“That arm hasn’t decayed. As far as I know anything about it, I’d say it’s because it’s been in that hole close to the main chimney of the house, which has preserved a very high temperature and kept the hole dry.”

Margot followed his deductions with eyes and lips expressing intensity of interest and the first respect for Hart’s intelligence which he had so far inspired in her.

“Sounds absolutely logical,” she said excitedly. “How long has the arm been in the hole, would you say?”

“Well, judging by the condition of the flesh, I’d say about three months.”

“Good!” She was trembling now from head to foot. “My training in medical college leads me to agree with you.” She turned at the sound of the door opening, and swept a quick glance over Mrs. Bellew, whose eyes were red, her face quivering with nervous fear. Then Margot, looking from Mrs. Bellew to Hart, and back again to the landlady, said quietly:

“Stella Ball disappeared from this room exactly three months ago, didn’t she, Mrs. Bellew?”

“Three months--yes, yes, three months,” the poor woman mumbled, almost beyond speech as her horrified gaze fixed itself on the desiccated arm.

“Damn queer coincidence.” Hart seemed to find it difficult to accept Margot’s deductions.

“Please, Mr. Hart,” she said impatiently, “just for the sake of argument, admit that there’s more than a coincidence in this. Just follow me closely. Admitting that this arm was once a part of Stella Ball’s body, there’s something else to explain. Up to the date of the crime--of course there’s been a crime! Just look at the way that arm was severed from the body! Well, up to that time, or, to put it differently, up to the time she disappeared, so far as Mrs. Bellew can tell us, neither of her hands was marked in this extraordinary way. Isn’t that true, Mrs. Bellew?” Margot put her hand gently on the woman’s trembling arm, trying to soothe her.

“No, no, dearie,” Mrs. Bellew’s voice, weak from shock, dropped to a whisper. “Her hand was just like yours and mine, dearie.”

Hart stood contemplating the scarred hand. Then he met Margot’s inquiring eyes.

“What do you make out of it, Mr. Hart?” she asked courteously.

“Granting, as you said, for the sake of argument, that the arm and hand down there belong to the girl Stella, then I’d say that she must have been fooling with some sort of acid. Poisoned the hand.”

Margot gave Mrs. Bellew’s arm an encouraging pat, then she went over and stood looking down at the ugly scar. Suddenly she bent closer. Someone started to speak and she threw out her hand with a quick gesture compelling silence. Gene moved closer to her, then he touched her shoulder and said softly:

“What is it, Margot?”

She stood up slowly, her fine eyes bright with the effort of concentrated thought and sudden inspiration.

“It’s not an acid burn. I’m sure of that,” she said slowly.

“How can you be sure without a chemical analysis?”

In Hart’s limited way he was certainly more intelligent than she had supposed.

“You’re right, of course, Mr. Hart, or rather you would be if it wasn’t for the fact that in my laboratory work I made a special study for a time, of the effect on skin and flesh of certain acids. Also, I was much interested in the study of radium burns.”

She stopped, looking significantly from Hart to the hand on the floor.

“You don’t mean--you can’t think that’s a radium burn, Margot!” It was Gene and not Hart who challenged her obvious deduction; Gene, with wide, astonished eyes staring at her.

“Yes, Gene, that’s just what I do mean. That’s a radium burn or I know nothing at all about radium, and I ought to know a good deal about it,” she asserted calmly.

Hart seemed nonplussed. He looked helplessly from Margot to the floor, and finally he said:

“Most people know something about radium, enough anyway to realize that it does very queer things. But this does seem a little too queer even for radium.”

“Why?” Margot questioned him eagerly. “If you admit or accept all the other much queerer things about this weird case, I can’t see anything especially remarkable in Stella Ball having burned her hand with radium. If you hold it in your hand long enough, it does burn, you know,” she ended with a smile.

“Held it in her hand long enough,” he repeated vaguely. “What do you mean? Held it in her hand before her hand was cut off?”

A sound that suggested that someone in the room was choking, brought Hart’s head around with a jerk to where his men were standing, at rigid attention. But every face was composed to expressionless immovability, except that if he had looked a little closer, he would have caught the faintest quiver at the corners of Quinlan’s broad mouth--Quinlan with his Irish humor up his sleeve. Margot struggled desperately with a laugh, then she said, with a conciliating smile:

“Mr. Hart, you’re not Irish, I know, but you’ll have to admit you made an Irish bull that time. How in the name of glory could the girl have gotten radium into her hand _after_ it was severed?”

Hart managed a smile. Not so bad for Hart, Margot thought, watching him. Then he returned to his subject with a new attack.

“Aren’t you running a little wild, Miss Anstruther? Radium! Why, that’s stuff for scientists! How could people living in a rooming house get hold of any of it?”

“Such a person might conceivably have stolen it,” she said smoothly.

Of a sudden Hart’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows met over his eyes. He stared ahead of him, at nothing apparently, then he met Margot’s intense scrutiny.

“I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, Mr. Hart, for it’s what I’m thinking myself. You’ve just remembered that a while ago, the Fellowe Institute lost some radium, a fraction of a gram in weight, but valued at $75,000. You’re remembering also that every other particle in the world is accounted for. I happen to know that the police have been trying for months to find the thief. May I ask if you haven’t had orders to watch out for him yourself?”

He stared at her, divided between amazement at what she had said, and wondering, if slowly dawning, admiration for the girl herself.

“You’re right, I have been. I suppose there’s some connection, but I can’t see it.” That he should be willing to concede the logic of any deduction of hers struck Margot as amusing.

“This is what I make out of it,” she said, looking from Hart to Gene. “Of course I know nothing about the theft from the Fellowe Institute, except what I read in the papers--what I suppose you both read at the time. But I’ve got this advantage. I’ve been a medical student. However, it seems to me if you accept my judgment that the burn is from radium, you ought to feel as if the trail were fairly hot.”

“Granting that you’re right about the burn, then all I’ve got to say, Miss Anstruther, is that you’re a clever young woman.”

The detective’s low bow gave Margot a pleasant little thrill. At last she had conquered his cynical distrust of her, of her motives, and her theories. It was a gesture of mental as well as physical obeisance.

“I suppose the next thing on the cards,” he said, moving toward the door, “is to grill the girl Stella--I mean in connection with the Institute job.”

“Wait a minute!” Margot said eagerly. “Have you a clear idea how a radium burn is produced, Mr. Hart?”

“Not exactly.”

She told him as simply and briefly as possible that radium eternally dissipates itself in infinitesimal particles. These pass, she explained, through anything they encounter; steel or stone are no obstacles to this stream of atoms. At long range, they are harmless to human tissues, but if the contact is close, they scorch and kill.

“I get you,” he said, obviously trying to grasp something that eluded him.

“Not quite,” she said gently. “But you will in a minute, as soon as you pry open those withered fingers.” She looked down at the thing on the floor.

Hart stared from her to the hand, and Mrs. Bellew and Boyle gave vent to low groans, and crossed themselves. In silence--a silence that vibrated with tense excitement--Hart bent down and tried to open the tightly clenched hand. It had long been rigid, and Margot saw his shoulders shake with sudden shrinking disgust. Then he bent back the fingers just enough to draw from the palm a small object which he held up to the light. It was a metal container about as large as the capsule in which druggists sell a dose of quinine.

More dazed than elated, he said doubtfully:

“Looks like what the Institute’s been trying to find.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Margot said excitedly, taking it from him and examining it. She handed it back to Hart saying: “Better be careful of it, Mr. Hart!” She smiled at the nervous haste with which he laid it in an empty ash tray. “Oh, it’s not that bad. You could hold it for a while without getting burned. What I meant is to be careful because it’s so precious. And it’s so small it’s easy to lose.”

“_Now_, what, Miss Anstruther? I’m inclined to take your orders in this case from now on.”

“I should say, now go and get Stella Ball and confront her with this evidence. This may shock her into telling us her story.”

“I’ll have her here right after supper,” said Hart.

“Fine! You’ll find me here, too.”

Margot smiled at Gene, took Mrs. Bellew gently by the arm, and together the three of them left the room of mystery.