Читать книгу The Crime of the Century; Or, The Assassination of Dr. Patrick Henry Cronin - Henry M. Hunt - Страница 40

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The little group stood dumbfounded as the ejaculation burst from the officer's lips, and, for the first time, they realized the terrible significance of their discovery. Quickly arousing themselves to action, however, they gently laid the body upon the stretcher and lifted it into the wagon. Little time was lost in making the return trip to the police station. Here the body was conveyed to the basement, which served the purpose of a morgue, and placed upon a low table. A cursory examination developed the fact that the cotton batting, as well as the towel around the neck, were heavily saturated with blood. Upon removing the towel, which had been tied in a knot, there was disclosed to view an

"AGNUS DEI,"

or scapular, a heart-shaped religious emblem very generally worn by adherents of the Roman Catholic faith as a safeguard against injury. Attached to a ribbon around the neck, it rested just below the collar bone. It was the only thing that the physician had worn in life that had been left to him in death, and, brutal and bloodthirsty as had been the assassins in the perpetration of their dastardly crime, they had evidently—even after stripping the corpse of their victim of every shred of clothing, in the hope that all means of identification would thus be destroyed—stood appalled at the idea of molesting the holy emblem of the church with their bloody hands. Even in that terrible moment, and in the presence of the naked and reeking corpse of the man they had lured to destruction, the "Agnus Dei," resting mute upon his breast, had possessed an influence that compelled them to pause. Thus far they had gone, but they could go no farther. It had spoken to their affrighted souls in trumpet tones: "Touch me not."

THE CORPSE WITH "AGNUS DEI" ON BREAST.

Considering the fact that the body had in all probability, been in the place where it was found for nearly three weeks, it was not by any means in the condition that would have been expected under the circumstances. It had swollen, however, to about one-third of the natural size. As it appeared under the gas light it was that of a stout, well-nourished man of about forty-five years of age. The skin was white, although the body and chest was considerably bloated. The feet, which had been the most exposed, were hardly cracked. The hair had peeled from the skin both of face and body. One side of the mustache, with the skin attached, was turned over onto the lip. Only a few straggling hairs were left on the other side, but, just under the lower lip, a small but well-defined goatee of dark bristling hairs was apparent. The forehead was bald, while the thick dark hair lay in matted clots on the back of the head. The chin—the towel not having been replaced—was sunk well into the neck. The mouth was tightly closed, and for a time resisted all efforts to force it open. About the ears and hands the skin hung in shreds, and the eyelids had swollen to such an extent that they had forced each other partly open. But it was the head that attracted the greatest attention, and brought exclamations of horror from the few spectators. It was a mass of wounds. In the forehead at the roots of the hair there were three horrible cuts, each over an inch in length, and attended with a slight discoloration that indicated decay. These had evidently been made with a sharp instrument. Over the right eye there was a wound that looked as though it might have been made with the cutting edge of a blunt axe. Others on the back of the head were evidently the work of a blunter instrument, but the worst one of all, on the top of the head, suggested the use of the back of a heavy axe. There was no need to look elsewhere for horrible explanations of the cause of death. The head told its own story. The unfortunate physician had been hacked to death with a brutality beyond conception.