Part 69

"It was one of the over-fine little touches that a guilty man tries to pile on his scheme for appearing innocent. But what are the facts?

"Just now, as soon as he got excited, he mechanically fubbed out his cigar. It's a habit of his--whenever he's in a close corner. He did it during the interview I had with him and Webster in the music room last Sunday morning--when, in fact, something dangerous to him came up. He did it again when I was talking to him in his office, following a visit from Mrs. Brace.

"There you have the beginning of my suspicion. Why had he gone out of his way to put a cigar stump into his pocket that night, and to explain that he had had it in his mouth all the time? When he came into my room, to wake me up, he had no cigar in his mouth. But, when you and I rounded the corner of the porch and first saw him kneeling over the body, he had one hand in his right-hand coat-pocket. And, when we stood beside him, he had put a half-smoked, unlit cigar into his mouth.

"You see my point, clearly? Instead of having had the cigar in his mouth and having kept it there while he found the body and reported the discovery to us, the truth is this: he had fubbed out the cigar when he met Mildred Brace on the lawn, and it had occurred to his calculating mind that it would be well, when he chose to give the alarm, to use the cigar stunt as evidence that he hadn't been engaged in quarrelling with and murdering a woman.

"He was right in his opinion that the average man doesn't go on calmly smoking while engaged in such activities. He was wrong in letting us discover where he'd carried the stump until he needed it.

"He had put it into that pocket, but, after committing the murder, he wasn't quite as calm as he'd expected to be--something had gone wrong; Webster had appeared on the scene--and the cigar wasn't restored to his mouth until you and I first reached the body.

"Here's my handkerchief, showing the ashes and the pieces of cigar tobacco on it, just as it was when he handed it back to me."

He took from one of his pockets a tissue-paper parcel, and, unwrapping it, handed it to Sloane.

"Ah-h-h-that's what it shows," Sloane admitted, bending over the handkerchief.

Wilton welcomed that with a laugh which he meant to be lightly contemptuous.

"See here, Arthur!" he objected. "I'm perfectly willing to listen to any sane statement this man may make, but----"

"You said you wanted to hear this!" Hasting stopped him. "I'm fair about it. I've told you why I began to watch you. I've got more."

"You need it," Sloane complained. "If it's all that thin----"

"Don't shout too soon," Hastings interrupted again. "Mr. Sloane, this man's been working against me from the start. Think a moment, and you'll realize it. While he was telling your daughter and a whole lot of other people that I was the only man to handle the case, he was slipping you the quiet instruction to avoid me, not to confide in me, not to tell me a single thing. Isn't that true?"

"We-ell, he did say the best way for me to avoid all possibility of being involved in the thing was not to talk to anybody."

"I knew it!" Hastings declared, giving his contempt full play. "And he persuaded you that you might have seen--might, mind you--and he gave you the suggestion skilfully, more by indirection than by flat statement--that you might have seen Berne Webster out there on the lawn that night, when you were uncertain, when you feared it yourself--a little. Isn't that true?"

Sloane looked at him with widening eyes, his lips trembling.

"Come, Mr. Sloane! Let's play fair, didn't he?"

"We-ell, yes."

"And," Hastings continued, thumping the table with a heavy hand to drive home the points of his statement, "he persuaded you to offer that money to Mrs. Brace--last Tuesday night.--Didn't he?--And that matches his slippery cunning in pretending he was saving Webster by hiding the fact that Webster's hand had gagged him when they found the body. He figured his willingness to help somebody else would keep suspicion away from him. I----"

"Rot! All rot!" Wilton broke in. "Where do you think you are, Arthur, on the witness stand? He'll have you saying white's black in a minute."

"Mr. Sloane," the detective said, getting to his feet, "he induced you to pay money to Mrs. Brace--while it's the colour of blackmail, it won't be a matter for prosecution; you gave it to her, in a sense, unsolicited--but he induced you to do that because he knew she was out for blackmail. He hoped that, if you bought her off, she wouldn't pursue him farther."

"Farther!" echoed Sloane. "What do you mean by that?"

"Why, man! Don't you see? Money was back of all that tragedy. He murdered the girl because she had come here to renew her mother's attempts at blackmail on him! Not content with duping you, with handling you as if you'd been a baby, he put you up to buying off the woman who was after him--and he did it by fooling you into thinking that you were saving the name, if not the very life, of your daughter's fiancé! He----"

"Lies! Wild lie!" thundered Wilton, pushing back from the table. "I'm through with----"

"No! No!" shrilled Sloane. "Wait! Prove that, Hastings! Prove it--if you can! Shuddering saints! Have I----?"

He looked once at Wilton's contorted face, and recoiled, the movement confessing at last his lack of faith in the man.

"I will," Hastings answered him, and moved toward the door; "I'll prove it--by the girl's mother."