第61章

Another waterproof sheet was spread over that table in the manner of a tablecloth with the corners turned up over a sort of mound - a heap of rags, scorched and bloodstained, half concealing what might have been an accumulation of raw material for a cannibal feast.It required considerable firmness of mind not to recoil before that sight.Chief Inspector Heat, an efficient officer of his department, stood his ground, but for a whole minute he did not advance.A local constable in uniform cast a sidelong glance, and said with stolid simplicity:

`He's all there.Every bit of him.It was a job.'

He had been the first man on the spot after the explosion.He mentioned the fact again.He had seen something like a heavy flash of lightning in the fog.At that time he was standing at the door of the King William Street Lodge talking to the keeper.The concussion made him tingle all over.He ran between the trees towards the Observatory.`As fast as my legs would carry me,' he repeated twice.

Chief Inspector Heat, bending forward over the table in a gingerly and horrified manner, let him run on.The hospital porter and another man turned down the corners of the cloth, and stepped aside.The Chief Inspector's eyes searched the gruesome detail of that heap of mixed things, which seemed to have been collected in shambles and rag shops.

`You used a shovel,' he remarked, observing a sprinkling of small gravel, tiny brown bits of bark, and particles of splintered wood as fine as needles.

`Had to in one place,' said the stolid constable.`I sent a keeper to fetch a spade.When he heard me scraping the ground with it he leaned his forehead against a tree, and was as sick as a dog.'

The Chief Inspector, stooping guardedly over the table, fought down the unpleasant sensation in his throat.The shattering violence of destruction which had made of that body a heap of nameless fragments affected his feelings with a sense of ruthless cruelty, though his reason told him the effect must have been as swift as a flash of lightning.The man, whoever he was, had died instantaneously; and yet it seemed impossible to believe that a human body could have reached that state of disintegration without passing through the pangs of inconceivable agony.No physiologist, and still less of a metaphysician, Chief Inspector Heat rose by the force of sympathy, which is a form of fear, above the vulgar conception of time.Instantaneous!

He remembered all he had ever read in popular publications of long and terrifying dreams dreamed in the instant of waking; of the whole past life lived with frightful intensity by a drowning man as his doomed head bobs up, screaming, for the last time.The inexplicable mysteries of conscious existence beset Chief Inspector Heat till he evolved a horrible notion that ages of atrocious pain and mental torture could be contained between two successive winks of an eye.And meantime the Chief Inspector went on peering at the table with a calm face and the slightly anxious attention of an indigent customer bending over what may be called the by-products of a butcher's shop with a view to an inexpensive Sunday dinner.All the time his trained faculties of an excellent investigator, who scorns no chance of information, followed the self-satisfied, disjointed loquacity of the constable.

`A fair-haired fellow,' the last observed in a placid tone, and paused.

`The old woman who spoke to the sergeant noticed a fair-haired fellow coming out of Maze Hill Station.' He paused.`And he was a fair-haired fellow.

She noticed two men coming out of the station after the uptrain had gone on,' he continued, slowly.`She couldn't tell if they were together.She took no particular notice of the big one, but the other was a fair, slight chap, carrying a tin varnish can in one hand.' The constable ceased.

`Know the woman?' muttered the Chief Inspector, with his eyes fixed on the table, and a vague notion in his mind of an inquest to be held presently upon a person likely to remain for ever unknown.

`Yes.She's housekeeper to a retired publican, and attends the chapel in Park Place sometimes,' the constable uttered weightily, and paused, with another oblique glance at the table.Then suddenly: `Well, here he is - all of him I could see.Fair.Slight - slight enough.Look at that foot there.I picked up the legs first, one after another.He was that scattered you didn't know where to'

The constable paused; the least flicker of an innocent, self-laudatory smile invested his round face with an infantile expression.

`Stumbled,' he announced, positively.`I stumbled once myself, and pitched on my head, too, while running up.Them roots do stick out all about the place.Stumbled against the root of a tree and fell, and that thing he was carrying must have gone off right under his chest, I expect.'

The echo of the words `Persons unknown' repeating itself in his inner consciousness bothered the Chief Inspector considerably.He would have liked to trace this affair back to its mysterious origin for his own information.

He was professionally curious.Before the public he would have liked to vindicate the efficiency of his department by establishing the identity of that man.He was a loyal servant.That, however, appeared impossible.

The first term of the problem was unreadable - lacked all suggestion but that of atrocious cruelty.

Overcoming his physical repugnance, Chief Inspector Heat stretched out his hand without conviction for the salving of his conscience, and took up the least soiled of the rags.It was a narrow strip of velvet with a larger triangular piece of dark blue cloth hanging from it.He held it up to his eyes; and the police constable spoke.

`Velvet collar.Funny the old woman should have noticed the velvet collar.

Dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, she has told us.He was the chap she saw, and no mistake.And here he is all complete, velvet collar and all.I don't think I missed a single piece as big as a postage stamp.'