Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/104

Rh thing—but why should any man take a stone who had a pistol and was not afraid to use it? "If there was any sense in it, I'd say it was a fake," Reggie grumbled.

He gave up the wounds at last and moved round the body.

"Oh, you're looking at the wrong hand," Barnes said.

"Am I though?"

"Yes, this is the one where the thumb's sprained—the right hand."

"Well, you know, he seems to have been busy with his hands. What did you make of this?"

Barnes came to look. The fingers of the left hand were bent towards the thumb as if the dead man had been plucking at something.

"Not much in that, is there?"

"What was he wearing?"

"Rough brown overcoat—brown tweeds."

"Oh, ah!" Delicately Reggie extracted from the stiff fingers some little curly, black tufts.

"Well, that's queer," Barnes said. "Looks like a nigger's hair."

"You know you've got imagination." Reggie put the stuff very carefully in his pocket-book. "Some oppressed nigger from the compounds at Johannesburg—came all the way to Prior's Colney for vengeance—threw a stone at him—shot him—and then butted him. Thorough fellow, very thorough."