Page:The Death-Doctor.djvu/261

Rh He was, I found, a careful and painstaking officer, popular with his men, but not particularly shrewd in the detection of crime.

Being in the uniformed branch of the service, he left investigation to the officers of the Criminal Investigation Department attached to the head-quarters of his Division.

But several facts struck me as curious in this case. And as we stood there, in the presence of the dead, I tried to form some theory as to the reason of that unknown man's suicide.

The body was quite cold, therefore death must have occurred many hours before. Who was he? Why had he intruded there in that empty house, when he apparently had had money at his command, as witnessed by the twenty-pound note upon the dressing-table? And why was he so anxious to announce his defiance?

While standing there in silence in the presence of that dead man with the queerly distorted face—contracted it seemed into a weird, hideous grin—I formed the conclusion that, whoever he was, he had actually been in imminent peril of arrest. Somebody, probably the person referred to as "The Wasp," had given away his secret. And his open defiance was