He was interested. "What was the cause of
death?" he asked.
Mr. Snyder coughed. "Snake bite," he said.
Oakes' careful calm deserted him. He uttered a cry of astonishment.
"Why, that's incredible!"
"It's the literal truth. The medical examination proved that the fellow
had been killed by snake poison--cobra, to be exact, which is found
principally in India."
"Cobra!"
"Just so. In a Southampton boarding-house, in a room with a locked
door, this man was stung by a cobra. To add a little mystification to
the limpid simplicity of the affair, when the door was opened there was
no sign of any cobra. It couldn't have got out through the door,
because the door was locked. It couldn't have got out of the window,
because the window was too high up, and snakes can't jump. And it
couldn't have gotten up the chimney, because there was no chimney. So
there you have it."
He looked at Oakes with a certain quiet satisfaction. It had come to
his ears that Oakes had been heard to complain of the infantile nature
and unworthiness of the last two cases to which he had been assigned.
He had even said that he hoped some day to be given a problem which
should be beyond the reasoning powers of a child of six.
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