Free Doktor Glass by Thomas Brennan

Salisbury’s warnings sounded again in his mind, but he couldn’t help the direction of his thoughts: The Span lay at the bottom of this.

Five
    W HEN THE HANSOM pulled up in the courtyard at Victoria Street headquarters, Langton left McBride with the desk sergeant and strode through the lobby, glancing at the hard wooden benches fixed to the walls where the ragged public sat huddled against the chill. He didn’t recognize anyone. Before he could climb the stairs to his office, McBride called him back.
    The desk sergeant leaned over the brass rail of his high wooden desk. “Begging your pardon, sir, but Doctor Fry asked for you.”
    Langton descended to the basement and found Doctor Fry in the cluttered office. “You left a message?”
    Fry looked up from the Imperial typewriter balanced on his desk’s uneven plateau of papers and files. “Langton, how did you fare with Caldwell Chivers?”
    Eager to get upstairs and see Forbes Paterson, Langton said, “The Professor was very helpful, thank you. He identified the marks on the victim’s neck as electrical burns.”
    “For what reason?”
    Langton hesitated, then said, “He mentioned the Jar Boys.”
    Fry nodded and began to clean his pince-nez with a handkerchief. “I thought as much.”
    “You knew?” Langton crossed to the desk. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Would you have believed me?”
    “Well…”
    “Exactly. And I couldn’t be sure. Caldwell Chivers has a great deal of experience in the subject. In fact, he’s quite an authority.”
    Again, Langton wondered how and why the Professor knew so much about the Jar Boys. But he wanted to talk with Forbes Paterson. “Was that all you wanted?”
    “Not quite.” Fry rummaged in desk drawers until he pulled out two crumpled sheets of yellow paper. “I queried London about the dead man’s fingerprints and received these replies. Look.”
    Langton went to tell Fry that they had already identified the man, but he read the first telegram:
Positive match found. Details to follow.
“So?”
    Fry held out the second telegram. “This arrived an hour or so after the first.”
    “‘No match found.’” Langton read out the contents and looked at Fry. “I don’t understand.”
    “Nor do I. Especially when I compared the senders’ details.”
    Langton scanned the first telegram and saw the sender’s address: The Home Office, Queen Anne’s Gate. But the second came from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. “Why would the FCO show interest in a criminal investigation?”
    Fry smiled. “I rather hoped you could tell me.”
    Langton thought for a moment, then asked, “May I keep these?”
    “By all means. Oh, I’m just finishing my report on your second customer, the sailor.”
    “Stoker Olsen?”
    “That’s the chap,” Fry said. “Neat job: a single puncture straight through the ribs to the heart. They knew what they were doing.”
    “And the weapon?”
    Fry unrolled a muslin bundle on his desk to reveal a sliver of brown-tinted steel perhaps ten inches long. “Sheffield steel with an edge on both sides. It’s used to remove tissue or lesions from around a bone.”
    He picked up the weapon by the engraved handle, using the muslin as a glove. “You see, the surgeon scrapes it along the length of the bone—the tibia, say, or the fibula—and cuts the tissue, thus.”
    At the final lunge, Langton winced. “So, a surgeon’s property.”
    “At one time, certainly, but who’s to say how it ended up in the hands of a murderer?”
    After thanking Fry, Langton climbed the stairs to his office. He had much to add to the case file, and much to consider. It was not to be; the office boy, Harry, limped up to him in the corridor. “A lady to see you, sir. I asked her to wait in your office.”
    “Did she give a name?” Langton asked, already thinking of Mrs. Grizedale.
    “Sister Wright, sir.”
    Langton found her sitting in his office. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Sister. I had no idea you