“Is it now?” said Cassidy, casually removing himself as far from the cupboard door as he could. “It ain’t one of them Western hammer murders, is it?”
“I don’t know what kind of a homicide it is, Cassidy. There are no marks on him that I can see.”
“Will it be poison, then?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s one or the other. I hate them mystery cases where the deceased got his go-by from a Chinese blow gun, or some imported snake from Timbuktu, or parts adjacent.”
“When did you ever work on such a case, Cassidy?”
“Sure, Lieutenant, you can read about them every week in the magazines. There’s one that’s in its fourth part now where some louse of foreign extraction kills a dumb cluck of a Wall Street magnet with a package of paper matches, the tips of which was so fixed that they exploded when struck, instead of acting decent like, and shot dabs of poison into the skin of his fingers. Can you imagine it? Just say the word and I’ll bring it around to the station house and you can read it for yourself.”
“Thanks, Cassidy.”
“It’ll be no trouble at all, Lieutenant.”
An important knock on the door disclosed a stranger. Lieutenant Valcour addressed him, correctly, as Dr. Worth.
Dr. Sanforth Worth did not merely imagine that he cut a distinguished figure; he was sure of it. A certain grayness clung impressively about the temples of an intellectual brow, and he was probably one of the few