cheek from the eye to the chin.

"A handsome girl," Thorndyke commented--"a dark-haired blonde. What a
sin to have disfigured herself so with that horrible peroxide." He
smoothed the hair back from her forehead, and added: "She seems to have
applied the stuff last about ten days ago. There is about a quarter of
an inch of dark hair at the roots. What do you make of that wound on the
cheek?"

"It looks as if she had struck some sharp angle in falling, though, as
the seats are padded in first-class carriages, I don't see what she
could have struck."

"No. And now let us look at the other wound. Will you note down the
description?" He handed me his notebook, and I wrote down as he
dictated: "A clean-punched circular hole in skull, an inch behind and
above margin of left ear--diameter, an inch and seven-sixteenths;
starred fracture of parietal bone; membranes perforated, and brain
entered deeply; ragged scalp-wound, extending forward to margin of left
orbit; fragments of gauze and sequins in edges of wound. That will do
for the present. Dr. Morton will give us further details if we want
them."

He pocketed his callipers and rule, drew from the bruised scalp one or
two loose hairs, which he placed in the envelope with the sequins, and,
having looked over the body for other wounds or bruises (of which there
were none), replaced the sheet, and prepared to depart.

As we walked away from the mortuary, Thorndyke was silent and deeply
thoughtful, and I gathered that he was piecing together the facts that
he had acquired. At length Mr. Stopford, who had several times looked at
him curiously, said:

"The _post-mortem_ will take place at three, and it is now only
half-past eleven. What would you like to do next?"

Thorndyke, who, in spite of his mental preoccupation, had been looking
about him in his usual keen, attentive way, halted suddenly.

"Your reference to the _post-mortem_," said he, "reminds me that I
forgot to put the ox-gall into my case."

"Ox-gall!" I exclaimed, endeavouring vainly to connect this substance
with the technique of the pathologist. "What were you going to do
with--"

But here I broke off, remembering my friend's dislike of any discussion
of his methods before strangers.

"I suppose," he continued, "there would hardly be an artist's colourman
in a place of this size?"

"I should think not," said Stopford. "But couldn't you got the stuff
from a butcher? There's a shop just across the road."