Chapter 2

“It’s all safe up above,” said he, “excepting the roof; and that isn’t
so very much damaged. The big windows saved it. They blew out and let
off the force of the explosion. The floor isn’t damaged at all. It’s
girder and concrete. But poor Mr. Manford caught it properly. He was
fairly blown to bits.”

“Do you know how it happened?” the inspector asked.

“I don’t,” was the reply. “When I came on duty Mr. Manford was up there
in his private laboratory. Soon afterwards a friend of his—a foreign
gentleman of the name of Bilsky—came to see him. I took him up, and
then Mr. Manford said he had some business to do, and after that he had
got a longish job to do and would be working late. So he said I might
turn in and he would let me know when he had finished. And he did let me
know with a vengeance, poor chap! I lay down in my clothes, and I hadn’t
been asleep above a couple of hours when some noise woke me up. Then
there came a most almighty bang. I rushed for an extinguisher and ran
upstairs, and there I found the big laboratory all ablaze, the windows
blown out and the ceiling down. But it wasn’t so bad as it looked. There
wasn’t very much stuff up there; only the experimental stuff, and that
burned out almost at once. I got the rest of the fire out in a few
minutes.”

“What stuff is it that you are speaking of?” the inspector asked.

“Celluloid, mostly, I think,” replied the watchman. “They make films and
other celluloid goods in the works. But Mr. Manford used to do
experiments in the material up in his laboratory. This time he was
working with alloys, melting them on the gas furnace. Dangerous thing to
do with all that inflammable stuff about. I don’t know what there was up
there, exactly. Some of it was celluloid, I could see by the way it
burned, but the Lord knows what it was that exploded. Some of the raw
stuff, perhaps.”

At this point we reached the top floor, where a door blown off its
hinges and a litter of charred wood fragments filled the landing.
Passing through the yawning doorway, we entered the laboratory and
looked on a hideous scene of devastation. The windows were mere holes,
the ceiling a gaping space fringed with black and ragged lathing,
through which the damaged roof was visible by the light of the
watchman’s powerful lantern. The floor was covered with the fallen
plaster and fragments of blackened woodwork, but its own boards were
only slightly burnt in places, owing, no doubt, to their being fastened
directly to the concrete which formed the actual floor.

“You spoke of some human remains,” said the inspector.

“Ah!” said the watchman, “you may well say ‘remains.’ Just come here.”
He led the way over the rubbish to a corner of the laboratory, where he
halted and threw the light of his lantern down on a brownish, dusty,
globular object that lay on the floor half buried in plaster. “That’s
all that’s left of poor Mr. Manford; that and a few other odd pieces. I
saw a hand over the other side.”

Thorndyke picked up the head and placed it on the blackened remnant of a
bench, where, with the aid of the watchman’s lantern and the inspection
lamp which I produced from our research-case, he examined it curiously.
It was extremely, but unequally, scorched. One ear was completely
shrivelled, and most of the face was charred to the bone. But the other
ear was almost intact; and though most of the hair was burned away to
the scalp, a tuft above the less-damaged ear was only singed, so that it
was possible to see that the hair had been black, with here and there a
stray white hair.

Thorndyke made no comments, but I noticed that he examined the gruesome
object minutely, taking nothing for granted. The inspector noticed this,
too; and when the examination was finished, looked at him inquiringly.

“Anything abnormal, sir?” he asked.

“No,” replied Thorndyke; “nothing that is not accounted for by fire and
the explosion. I see he had no natural teeth, so he must have worn a
complete set of false teeth. That should help in the formal
identification, if the plates are not completely destroyed.”

“There isn’t much need for identification,” said the watchman, “seeing
that there was nobody in the building but him and me. His friend went
away about half-past twelve. I heard Mr. Manford let him out.”

“The doctor means at the inquest,” the inspector explained. “Somebody
has got to recognise the body if possible.”

He took the watchman’s lantern, and throwing its light on the floor,
began to search among the rubbish. Very soon he disinterred from under a
heap of plaster the headless trunk. Both legs were attached, though the
right was charred below the knee and the foot blown off, and one
complete arm. The other arm—the right—was intact only to the elbow.
Here, again, the burning was very unequal. In some parts the clothing
had been burnt off or blown away completely; in others, enough was left
to enable the watchman to recognise it with certainty. One leg was much
more burnt than the other; and whereas the complete arm was only
scorched, the dismembered one was charred almost to the bone. When the
trunk had been carried to the bench and laid there beside the head, the
lights were turned on it for Thorndyke to make his inspection.

“It almost seems,” said the police officer, as the hand was being
examined, “as if one could guess how he was standing when the explosion
occurred. I think I can make out finger-marks—pretty dirty ones,
too—on the back of the hand, as if he had been standing with his hands
clasped together behind him while he watched something that he was
experimenting with.” The inspector glanced for confirmation at
Thorndyke, who nodded approvingly.

“Yes,” he said, “I think you are right. They are very indistinct, but
the marks are grouped like fingers. The small mark near the wrist
suggests a little finger and the separate one near the knuckle looks
like a fore-finger, while the remaining two marks are close together.”
He turned the hand over and continued: “And there, in the palm, just
between the roots of the third and fourth fingers, seems to be the trace
of a thumb. But they are all very faint. You have a quick eye,
inspector.”

The gratified officer, thus encouraged, resumed his explorations among
the debris in company with the watchman—the fireman had retired after a
professional look round—leaving Thorndyke to continue his examination
of the mutilated corpse, at which I looked on unsympathetically. For we
had had a long day and I was tired and longing to get home. At length I
drew out my watch, and with a portentous yawn, entered a mild protest.

“It is nearly two o’clock,” said I. “Don’t you think we had better be
getting on? This really isn’t any concern of ours, and there doesn’t
seem to be anything in it, from our point of view.”