Free Games of the Hangman by Victor O'Reilly

and on suspicious circumstances, I took extensive samples of blood,
hair, urine, stomach contents, and so on, and sent them for examination in
Dublin
.   I thought there was some possibility that he
might have been under the influence of some self-administered drug, and I
requested the toxicological tests as an extra precaution."
    "And?"
said Fitzduane.
    "Nothing
found," said Buckley.   "A very healthy young man, apart from being hanged, that is.   Mind you, I'm not saying it was absolutely
impossible.   There are a staggering
number of drugs and chemicals available today.   What I am saying is that we found no evidence that he was drugged or
poisoned in any way.   The lab people are
well practiced and expert, and it is unlikely they
would have missed an alien substance in the body.   A more likely possibility would be that a
more remote substance might take longer to identify.   But let me repeat, no alien substance was
found."
    "What
about hypnosis? " Fitzduane wasn't sure he
believed in such a possibility himself, but Buckley was the expert, and he'd
seen some decidedly odd things in the
Congo
.
    "I don't
know," said Buckley in a deadpan voice.   "There could have been a witch doctor hidden in the tree.   All I can say is that I didn't find a shiny
gold watch dangling in front of his eyes when I carried out the
examination."
    Fitzduane
didn’t feel particularly amused.   He knew
pathologists had a reputation for ghoulish humor, but the blown-up images of
Rudolf on the screen weren't doing much for his own sense of fun.
    Buckley was
not insensitive to his reaction.   "More seriously," he went on, "the evidence available
suggests that it is most unlikely an individual will deliberately cause himself harm even when under hypnosis.   The survival instinct is strong.   Of course, there are recorded circumstances
of quite extraordinary happenings in Africa, India, and so on, but in those
cases the victim was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that
a witch doctor was normally preconditioned for his whole life to accept that a
witch doctor or whoever had the power to put a spell on him that could result
in his death."
    "Preconditioned?"
    "Preconditioned,"
said Buckley.   "An unlikely
happening for a you man brought up in the heartland of
Western capitalism."
    Fitzduane
smiled.   "Unlikely."
    Buckley
switched the projector off and allowed it to cool for a few minutes.   The room was now lit only by the reflecting
glow of an angle desk lamp.   Fitzduane
stood up and stretched.   One way or
another he had been sitting for most of the day, and he was tired and stiff
from the long drive.
    Click!   The lower two-thirds of Rudolf von
Graffenlaub filled the screen.   Buckley
pressed the button on the illuminated pointer, and the little arrow of light
indicated the stained area around the crotch of the dead youth's jeans.
    "You will
observe," said Buckley in his lecturer's voice, "that the deceased's
bowels evacuated as he was dying.   You
may think that this indicates poisoning or something of the sort.   Such is not the case.   In fact, it is reasonably common, though not
inevitable, for such an occurrence to take place during the convulsions of
dying.   It is also not uncommon in the
case of a male for ejaculation to take place.   As it happens, in this case there was no evidence of ejaculation.
    "Police
inquiries disclosed that the deceased attended breakfast in the college
refectory a couple of hours before his death.   This gave me a little concern when I read the report before making my
examination, since it's my experience that suicides rarely eat much in the
period immediately prior to the taking of life.   However, on examination of the stomach contents, I was relieved to find
that he had not actually eaten at breakfast, though he had drunk some
tea."
    "Yet
another indication of suicide," said Fitzduane.
    "Well, if
that was what he was contemplating, it was scarcely surprising that