Pescini had been in the lounging-room only a few minutes before the crime was committed. It seemed doubtful that he would have had time to cover the distance between the house and the lagoon, strike Florey low, and get back to the place where we met him in the short time of his absence.
Besides, I wanted to work alone. I couldn’t bring myself to share my discoveries with Slatterly and Weldon.
The hall below was deserted and half in darkness. I met Marten and Nopp on the way to their rooms: passing into the library I found Hal Fargo seated under a reading-lamp, deep in “Floridan fauna.” Major Dell was smoking quietly on the veranda, gazing out over the moonlit lawns. Van Hope and Pescini himself were seated at the far end of the lounging-room, evidently in earnest conversation.
I sat down across the room where from time to time I could glance up and observe the bearded face of my suspect. How animated he was, how effective the gestures of his firm, strong hands. Was that the hand I had seen in the flashlight over my table the preceding night? He had rather thin, esthetic lips, half concealed by his mustache. Yet it wasn’t a cruel or degenerate face.
But soon I forgot about Pescini to marvel at the growing, oppressive heat of the night. The chill that usually drops over the West coast in the first hours of darkness, did not manifest itself to-night. It was the kind of heat that brings a flush to the face and a ghastly crawling to the brain, swelling the neck glands until the linen collar chokes like strangling fingers, and heightens the temper clear to the explosion-point. Van Hope and Pescini tore at their collars, seemingly at first unaware as to the source of their discomfort.
In reality the heat wave had overspread us rather swiftly, and what was its source and by what shiftings of the air currents it had been sent to harry us was mostly beyond the wit of man to tell. The temperature must have been close to a hundred in that big, coolly furnished room, and the veranda outside seemed to offer no relief. The dim warmth from the electric lights above, added to the sweltering heat of the air, was wholly perceptible on the heated brain, and seemed to stretch the over-taut nerves to the breaking-point.
“Isn’t this the devil?” Van Hope exclaimed as I came out. “It wasn’t half so hot at sunset. For Heaven’s sake let’s have a drink.”
“Whiskey’d only make us hotter, would it not?”
“The English don’t think so—but they’re full of weird ideas. Have that big coon bring us some lemonade then—iced tea—anything. This is the kind of night that sets men crazy.”
Men who have spent July in India, when the humidity is on the land, could appreciate such heat, but it passed ordinary understanding. It harassed the brain and fevered the blood, and warned us all of lawless demons that lived just under our skins. A man wouldn’t be responsible, to-night. The devil inside of him, recognizing a familiar temperature, escaped his bonds and stood ready to take any advantage of openings.