“Now, now!” boomed Joshua Q. Mosely. “Don’t you go calling bad names, ma’am, prematoorely. I get the chief’s drift. He’s dead right. The evidence is clear. Don’t you see? Vail here admits he went outside a little before the murder and that he came in again a little after it. He says he wasn’t farther off than the walk that borders the porch. He admits he didn’t see or hear any one else. That can’t mean but just one thing. It means he shinned up those vines and into the window and—and did what he went there to do—and came back in time to run upstairs when the dog waked us. And I heard you tell the doctor on the phone that it was Vail’s own knife the murder was done with. There’s nothing else to it. He—”
“It’s you who are the old fool, Mosely, not only the chief!” exclaimed Clive Creede, wrathfully, as the rest sat open-mouthed with dismay at the linking of the chain of seemingly stupid questions. “If you knew Mr. Vail as we know him—as the chief ought to know him—you’d know he couldn’t do such a thing. He couldn’t! Why, what motive could he have? Absolutely none. It needs a terrific motive to make a man commit murder. Juries take that into account.”
“But—”
“Thax had no such motive. I could swear to that. If his butler or any other servant should have overheard and testify to the petty quarrel between him and Chase that I walked in on early in the morning, when I came here, any jury would laugh at such a squabble leading to a crime. I speak of it because the butler was in the outer hall at the time and may give a wrong impression of the spat; and some shyster lawyer may try to magnify it. It was nothing. Chase wanted to come to board and Vail, for some reason, didn’t want him to. At least that is all of the quarrel I heard. But men don’t kill each other for puerile causes like that. Any more than for the silly dispute I overheard them having a few days ago at the Hunt Club in Stockbridge when Vail threatened he’d—”
“You idiot!” growled Thaxton. “What are you trying to get at? You’ve known Chase and me all our lives. You know we were good chums. And you know we were forever bickering, in fun, and having mock disputes and insulting each other; from the time we were kids. So—”
“That’s just what I’m saying,” urged Clive eagerly. “That’s what I’m trying to hammer into the chief’s head. You had no real motive, no matter what servants or other people may be dragged forward to testify about hearing spats and squabbles between you. You were his friend. Why, Chief, you’re out of your mind when you threaten to arrest him!”
“From all I’m hearing,” said the chief grimly, “I figure I’m less and less out of my mind. Mr. Vail, do you care to tell the nature of the quarrel between you and the deceased—the one Mr. Creede says he ‘walked in on’?”
“I’ve told you,” interposed Creede vehemently, “and so has he, that it was just a sort of joke. It has no bearing on the case. As Vail says, he and Chase were always at swords’ points—in a friendly way. Besides,” he went on, triumphantly, “I can attest to the truth of at least one important part of what he’s just told you. I can swear to it. He said a few minutes ago that he made a round of the house from top to bottom, about one o’clock. He did. I heard him. I couldn’t get to sleep till nearly two. I heard the stable clock strike one. Then almost right afterward I heard soft steps come upstairs and tiptoe along the hall. I heard them pause at the room next to mine, and I heard a rattle as if the door was being tried. Then the steps passed on to—”
“Sounded as if he tiptoed to the room next to yours and tried the door?” interrupted the chief. “Who was occupying the room next to you?”
Clive’s lips parted for a reply. Then, as his eyes suddenly dilated his mouth clamped.