“With a quick thrust—she’s
a big woman and a bold one—she strikes.
Possibly Hotchkiss is right about the left-hand blow.
Harrington may have held her right hand, or perhaps
she held the dirk in her left hand as she groped with
her right. Then, as the man falls back, and
his grasp relaxes, she straightens and attempts to
get away. The swaying of the car throws her
almost into your berth, and, trembling with terror,
she crouches behind the curtains of lower ten until
everything is still. Then she goes noiselessly
back to her berth.”
I nodded.
“It seems to fit partly, at least,” I
said. “In the morning when she found that
the crime had been not only fruitless, but that she
had searched the wrong berth and killed the wrong man;
when she saw me emerge, unhurt, just as she was bracing
herself for the discovery of my dead body, then she
went into hysterics. You remember, I gave her
some whisky.
“It really seems a tenable theory. But,
like the Sullivan theory, there are one or two things
that don’t agree with the rest. For one
thing, how did the remainder of that chain get into
Alison West’s possession?”
“She may have picked it up on the floor.”
“We’ll admit that,” I said; “and
I’m sure I hope so. Then how did the murdered
man’s pocket-book get into the sealskin bag?
And the dirk, how account for that, and the blood-stains?”
“Now what’s the use,” asked McKnight
aggrievedly, “of my building up beautiful theories
for you to pull down? We’ll take it to
Hotchkiss. Maybe he can tell from the blood-stains
if the murderer’s finger nails were square or
pointed.”
“Hotchkiss is no fool,” I said warmly.
“Under all his theories there’s a good
hard layer of common sense. And we must remember,
Rich, that neither of our theories includes the woman
at Doctor Van Kirk’s hospital, that the charming
picture you have just drawn does not account for Alison
West’s connection with the case, or for the
bits of telegram in the Sullivan fellow’s pajamas
pocket. You are like the man who put the clock
together; you’ve got half of the works left
over.”
“Oh, go home,” said McKnight disgustedly.
“I’m no Edgar Allan Poe. What’s
the use of coming here and asking me things if you’re
so particular?”
With one of his quick changes of mood, he picked up
his guitar.
“Listen to this,” he said. “It
is a Hawaiian song about a fat lady, oh, ignorant
one! and how she fell off her mule.”
But for all the lightness of the words, the voice
that followed me down the stairs was anything but
cheery.
“There was a Kanaka in Balu did
dwell,
Who had for his daughter a monstrous fat
girl-
he sang in his clear tenor. I paused on the
lower floor and listened. He had stopped singing
as abruptly as he had begun.
AT THE BOARDING-HOUSE
