Page:Bailey - Call Mr Fortune (Dutton, 1921).djvu/237

226 —little white powder"—he smelt it, put a fragment on the tip of his finger and tasted—"which is cocaine. Well, come in. Bell, come in. See what you can make of the place. I can't find a finger-print anywhere." He slipped the gold box into his pocket.

The two detectives came in, and went over the room even more minutely than he. "There's nothing that tells me anything," said Bell.

Reggie sat on the edge of the bath. "Well, well, I wouldn't say that," he said mildly. "It's not what we could wish. Bell. But there are points—there are points."

"All right, sir. Call Mr. Fortune," Bell grinned.

"I don't say it'll ever go into court. But some things we do know. The dead man is Rand, the elusive Rand. He had papers worth burning. He was killed by a powerful man with one or two blows, probably in the sitting-room. After death he was stripped and dressed in the unmarked clothes, probably here. For his body was brought where a mess could be cleaned up, to have the face smashed in. You can see the dents in the linoleum where his head lay. And then he was pitched out by that window. There's a bit of animal matter, probably human tissue, on that scrap of wood. Then the slayer packed up everything that was bloody and went off; and one of 'em—the tidy