The Cask - Freeman Wills Crofts (universal ebook reader .TXT) 📗

narrow, stretched back from the entrance door in the rue St. Jean to the staircase in a direction parallel to the Avenue de l’Alma. On the right was the drawing-room, a large apartment in the angle between the two streets, with windows looking out on both. Across the hall, with its door facing that of the drawing-room, was the study, another fine room facing on to the rue St. Jean. A small sitting-room, used chiefly by the late Madame Boirac, and the dining-room were situated behind the study and the drawing-room respectively. To the rear of the doors of these latter rooms were the staircase and servants’ quarters.

The detectives examined these respective rooms in detail. The furnishing was luxurious and artistic. The drawing-room furniture was Louis Quatorze, with an Aubusson carpet and some cabinets and tables of buhl. There was just enough of good Sèvres and Ormolu, the whole selection of arrangement reflecting the taste of the connoisseur. The dining-room and boudoir gave the same impression of wealth and culture, and the detectives as they passed from room to room were impressed by the excellent taste everywhere exhibited. Though their search was exhaustive it was unfortunately without result.

The study was a typical man’s room, except in one respect. There was the usual thick carpet on the floor, the customary book-lined walls, the elaborate desk in the window, and the huge leather armchairs. But there was also what almost amounted to a collection of statuary⁠—figures, groups, friezes, plaques, and reliefs, in marble and bronze. A valuable lot, numerous enough and of sufficient excellence not to have disgraced the art galleries of a city. M. Boirac had clearly the knowledge, as well as the means, to indulge his hobby to a very full extent.

Burnley took his stand inside the door and looked slowly round the room, taking in its every detail in the rather despairing hope that he would see something helpful to his quest. Twice he looked at the various objects before him, observing in the slow, methodical way in which he had trained himself, making sure that he had a clear mental conception of each before going on to the next. And then his gaze became riveted on an object standing on one of the shelves.

It was a white marble group about two feet high of three garlanded women, two standing and one sitting.

“I say,” he said to Lefarge, in a voice of something approaching triumph, “have you heard of anything like that lately?”

There was no reply, and Burnley, who had not been observing his companion, looked around. Lefarge was on his knees examining with a lens something hidden among the thick pile of the carpet. He was entirely engrossed, and did not appear to have heard Burnley’s remark, but as the latter moved over he rose to his feet with a satisfied little laugh.

“Look here!” he cried. “Look at this!”

Stepping back to the cross wall adjoining the door, he crouched down with his head close to the floor and his eyes fixed on a point on the carpet in a line between himself and the window.

“Do you see anything?” he asked.

Burnley got into the same position, and looked at the carpet.

“No,” he answered slowly, “I do not.”

“You’re not far enough this way. Come here. Now look.”

“Jove!” Burnley cried, with excitement in his tones. “The cask!”

On the carpet, showing up faintly where the light struck it, was a ring-shaped mark about two feet four inches diameter. The pile was slightly depressed below the general surface, as might have been caused by the rim of a heavy cask.

“I thought so too,” said Lefarge, “but this makes it quite certain.”

He held out his lens, and indicated the part of the floor he had been scrutinising.

Burnley knelt down and, using the lens, began to push open the interstices of the pile. They were full of a curious kind of dust. He picked out some and examined it on his hand.

“Sawdust!” he exclaimed.

“Sawdust,” returned the other, in a pleased and important tone. “See here,”⁠—he traced a circle on the floor⁠—“sawdust has been spilled over all this, and there’s where the cask stood beside it. I tell you, Burnley, mark my words, we are on to it now. That’s where the cask stood while Felix, or Boirac, or both of them together, packed the body into it.”

“By Jove!” Burnley cried again, as he turned over this new idea in his mind. “I shouldn’t wonder if you are right!”

“Of course I’m right. The thing’s as plain as a pikestaff. A woman disappears and her body is found packed in sawdust in a cask, and here, in the very house where she vanishes, is the mark of the same cask⁠—a very unusual size, mind you⁠—as well as traces of the sawdust.”

“Ay, it’s likely enough. But I don’t see the way of it for all that. If Felix did it, how could he have got the cask here and away again?”

“It was probably Boirac.”

“But the alibi? Boirac’s alibi is complete.”

“It’s complete enough, so far as that goes. But how do we know it’s true? We have had no real confirmation of it so far.”

“Except from François. If either Boirac or Felix did it, François must have been in it, too, and that doesn’t strike me as likely.”

“No, I admit the old chap seems all right. But if they didn’t do it, how do you account for the cask being here?”

“Maybe that had something to do with it,” answered Burnley, pointing to the marble group.

Lefarge started.

“But that’s what was sent to Felix, surely?” he cried, in surprise.

“It looks like it, but don’t say anything. Here’s François. Let us ask him.”

The butler entered the room holding a slip of paper which he gave to Lefarge.

“Suzanne’s address, messieurs.” Lefarge read:⁠—

“Mlle. Suzanne Daudet,
rue Popeau, 14b,
Dijon.”

“Look here, François,” said the detective, pointing to the marble group. “When did that come here?”

“Quite recently, monsieur. As you see, Monsieur is a collector of such things, and that is, I think, the latest addition.”

“Can you remember the exact day it