"I still don't see what you're getting at," said the puzzled Devreaux.
Dexter faced the colonel, confident and clear-eyed, as a man who at last finds solid ground underfoot. "This:" he asserted. "Before I left the cabin I forced my two prisoners to get into the bunks, and bound their feet to the posts. The one I'm now certain was Mrs. Stark was tied in the upper bunk. The head of the bunk touched the chimney, and as Alison tells us, there was a secret cubby hole there, with a telephone in it. The woman was handcuffed, but the chain gave her five or six inches' play. She could have used her hands. She could take out the telephone, call one of Stark's stations, and return the instrument without my being the wiser."
"I follow you so far," admitted the colonel, "but—"
"When I came back to the cabin I heard a woman's voice in the darkness behind the door. She said something about there being police in the valley, of being betrayed. I recall her words: 'Lifeless tongues never talk.' 'There's one thing left to do,' she said, 'and I'm going to do it.' After that the voice stopped; there was a silence, broken by a cry for mercy—Mudgett crying in fear and horror; then a shot, followed quickly by another shot. The door was barred, but I broke in, found my prisoners dead, the windows shut—nobody there."
"Well?" urged Devreaux in a sharp undertone.
"What are the usual emotions of a prisoner arrested for a capital crime?" inquired the corporal with seeming irrelevance. "Anger," he answered for himself, before Devreaux could reply—"bitterness, hopelessness, despair, blackness crushing upon him from all directions. You've arrested plenty of them. You know. And such were the reactions of my prisoner in the upper bunk.
"I had taken a big pistol from her when she tried to shoot me in the doorway. But I hadn't searched her for other weapons. Careless! She must have had another gun concealed about her person." Dexter thrust his hand into his pocket, and brought forth Alison's little pearl-handled revolver. "This one!
"You said you carried this in your bag," he remarked in an aside, glancing at the girl. "Could Mrs. Stark have taken it without your knowing?"
"Yes, she had opportunities," Alison answered unsteadily. "She might have done so."
"She did," answered Dexter coolly. "She must have."