Free Dead Man's Quarry by Ianthe Jerrold Page A

day before yesterday. He’d twisted his ankle. But I didn’t know he had it bandaged.”
    â€œLimping?” ejaculated Dr. Browning. “Was he? I never noticed that. Nobody told me he’d twisted his ankle. I’d have bound it up for him properly.”
    â€œOh, it wasn’t anything much,” said Felix listlessly. “He ricked it scrambling on the river-bank that day we all bathed. He said he had a weak ankle and often ricked it a bit, and didn’t want to make a fuss about it.”
    â€œWhich ankle was it?” asked Dr. Browning, drawing down one of the dead man’s socks and examining the skin.
    â€œThe left,” said Felix uncertainly. “No, the right. I can’t remember. But it was only a little twist, not anything noticeable, because I looked at it myself when he mentioned it.”
    â€œHullo!” exclaimed Dr. Browning. “What’s this?” He pointed to a spot half-way up the front of the shin where a large monogram forming the letters C.P. stood out in dark crimson on the white waxy flesh.
    Blodwen glanced at it and observed:
    â€œYes. He had that done when he was a boy. I was thinking of that when I said I knew I could identify him. An old sailor in Cornwall did it for him on one of our holidays. He was about fifteen at the time. Our father was very angry about it. But tattooing is easier done than undone. I knew I should recognize my brother again.”
    â€œThere’s one thing more,” said Superintendent Lovell, who had been listening intently to this explanation. “Where is Sir Charles’s luggage?”
    â€œLuggage?” echoed Felix. “His pyjamas and toothbrush, do you mean? Oh, I’ve got them. I carried the haversack, because I’d got a carrier on my bicycle and Charles hadn’t. His was a hired bicycle and a rotten one.”
    â€œDid he have an overcoat of any kind?”
    â€œA rain-coat, yes. I haven’t got that. He usually slung it over his handle-bars.”
    â€œWell, it’s missing,” said Lovell briefly, jotting a note down in the book he was carrying. “Now, about this bicycle, Mr. Felix. You say it had no carrier?”
    â€œNo. It had no pump, no carrier and no mending-outfit.”
    Superintendent Lovell looked at him intently, and then meditatively at the far corner of the shed. John Christmas saw an old, rather shabby bicycle, much crumpled and battered, lying upon a sack. A green enamelled pump was lying by its side. They all looked at it and there was a brief pause.
    â€œThat’s not Charles’s bicycle!” said Felix at length decidedly. “Or—wait a minute! Yes, he borrowed Lion’s pump just before we saw the last of him. But Lion’s pump wasn’t a green one!” He approached the bicycle and stooped over it. “And this bicycle has a carrier! No, Superintendent, that’s not the bicycle Charles was riding. This is a Rover. His was an old Humber.”
    He straightened himself, quite flushed with the excitement of his discovery.
    â€œThis is very interesting,” observed Lovell in his quiet, unemotional voice. “I suppose you don’t recognize this bicycle, sir, as anybody else’s?”
    â€œNo,” answered Felix regretfully. “I wish I did. For surely it must be a very important clue. It must mean—why, surely it must mean that the murderer was also riding a bicycle, and pushed his own bicycle over the quarry in mistake for Charles’s! And that must mean that Charles’s own bicycle is still about somewhere! Why, if we can trace it, and trace the owner of this machine, we shall have the murderer!”
    He spoke freely and excitedly. John, watching him, noted that with this discovery his concern over his cousin’s death seemed to have completely dropped from him. He was like a man suddenly relieved from a heavy load of care. Queer, thought John, and stored the impression in his mind